


Dust from the Past

by PonderingWriter (Tziput13)



Series: Puffs' Saga [2]
Category: Powerpuff Girls
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Light Angst, Original Series, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-04-22 17:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 66,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4844357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tziput13/pseuds/PonderingWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new hero has taken his position to defend a city on the other side of the ocean from crime and forces of evil, and the Powerpuff Girls couldn't be more happy for it. But an unknown evil mastermind is not pleased with his progresses, and plans to achieve his ultimate revenge with the help of an expert on the topic and his rowdy sons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ultrapolis

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel, so in case you haven't I suggest you to read the previous story if you're interested in going with this one. You can find the first story by checking the series this story is part of.
> 
> I'll point out that OCs in this story will play major roles, even if compared to the first story. Just so you know in case OC-heavy stories are not your cup of tea.

* * *

**Extract from Prof. Laurentium's Journal:**

_10th May (five years before the Incident),_

_the last meeting at the general lab has been quite a success. Thank goodness I have been able to convince most of my colleagues to abandon the strategy they had chosen yesterday with the last experiment… that one was far too dangerous for comfort. We need to keep the security level of our tests at the safest possible level: we cannot take lightly our work. For now, I've been able to do so, but for when that will no more be possible, I'm afraid I'll need to leave and build my own laboratory here at home if I want to continue my studies._

_One of my colleagues was particularly hard to convince. To be honest, I think he didn't change his idea and that he stopped arguing only because he was the only one left. I'll have to keep an eye on the man… I don't like him at all._

* * *

 

_The city of Ultrapolis! A true rarity in the European panorama._

_Ultrapolis is one of the youngest cities that were ever built on the old continent, perhaps the youngest one of them all. Unlike other metropolises of the same area, this place has no old town centre where every building is basically a piece of history. Instead, the city centre is one of the finest examples of modernity: towering skyscrapers, crowded streets, and enormous plazas make Ultrapolis rival with American cities like New York, Chicago, Townsville, San Francisco, and many more._

_Yet, the similarities with the United States' counterparts of Ultrapolis don't stop here. Economy, structure, how the town is governed, that giant monster, and so on. In fact, there are certain aspects that Ultrapolis shares with another city in particular, and-…_

_Wait, did I say giant monster?_

_Yes! A giant lizard monster is currently chewing the remains of an office building near the city centre, terrorizing people and leaving behind itself a path of destruction impossible not to be noticed. How can Ultrapolis resist to this bringer of terror?  
_

_Well, I did say that there are aspects shared with other cities, didn't I?_

* * *

The monster watched the people inside the room he was going to devour. It licked his fangs, eager to bite something a bit tastier than hard concrete.

Men and women screamed alike as the creature attacked them, but when his teeth clenched shut, he was surprised to notice he had not eaten a single human. In fact, the entire piece of building had disappeared from his hands.

Perplexed, the monster straightened his back and rotated his head, inspecting the surroundings in search of his stolen meal. It didn't take him much time to locate the room he was previously holding,  _flying away_ and landing calmly on the ground. Then, a yellow streak bolted from it, directed towards the reptile.

The monster was not pleased to see his lunch taken away from him. He glared at the fool that had dared to challenge him and his patience.

The Godzilla-like creature stood on four paws and launched an angry roar towards his opponent, almost breaking every glass object in a radius of one kilometer.

"...that is a declaration of war, isn't it?" the little yellow eyed boy calmly said, not at all dazed by this showcase of strength.

The monster had had it of the insolence of this brat. With another growl, he slashed his claws at the boy with surprising speed for a being of his size. But it was not enough fast, as the boy disappeared in a yellow beam before the giant could reach him. Immediately, the superhero began launching yellow energy spheres at the body of the monsters, continuing to move in order to avoid the sharp claws. Soon the boy understood that it was no good keeping at it: the lizard was covered by a thick draft of reptilian scales as hard as metal, and there was no weak point visible.

 _This thing is the first one of its kind I fight! How the heck I am supposed to know how to beat him?,_ the boy thought while he flied away at a safe distance, studying the monster. The lizard did not follow him at first, and this gave him some precious seconds to regain his breath and think of a way to finish the battle as soon as possible.

Of course, this boy wasn't normal, neither in abilities nor in shape. His head, a bit disproportioned to the rest of his body, was only the tip of it, given the enormous eyes with yellow eyelids and the fingerless hands. He was wearing a yellow long-sleeved shirt and simple black trousers, with a pair of sneakers that shared the colour of his eyes. The appearance was completed by his short, straight, dark blonde hair.

This boy was no other than Donnie, the same boy the Powerpuff Girls had saved from a terrible fate six months ago. And he seemed to have slightly changed from that event.

Before he could think of a good plan, the monster decided it was time to make his move. Quickly, he inspected his surroundings until he located something he could use against the superpowered kid. Something dangerous.

Donnie braced himself when the lizard grabbed a near powerline framework and threw the thing at him. Avoiding the flying metal was easy, but Donnie had failed to realize that the monster had not cut the electrical wires. This caused the wires themselves to follow the flying object in the air, and there were too many of those for Donnie to evade. Soon the boy was used as a conductor by a high voltage current, event that momentarily stunned him.

The monster was already on him before Donnie could recover, and it wasted no time as it literally punched away the kid, with a force enough to send him through three lines of skyscrapers and eventually crashing him in the outskirts.

The monster grinned, confident to have already achieved an easy victory, and marched towards the crashing site in order to give the final blow in case it was needed.

Soon, he knew that he would have to work harder to win against the yellow puff.

In an explosion of yellow light, Donnie darted away from the crater he was lying on and made a beeline for the monster's stomach. Before the above mentioned monster could defend itself, Donnie was already on him and kicked with all his strength the creature, making it stumble back. But the boy did not left him alone and continue to storm him with close combat attacks, trying to find a scale or a zone where the armour was weaker.

The lizard was beginning to get ticked off: he waited for the right moment to grab the kid while he tried to slash him continuously, keeping him busy. The monsters' arms were incredibly fast for an organism of his size, and Donnie soon understood his second error when he suddenly found himself trapped inside one of the lizard's fists. With a roar, he tossed the boy towards the ground, where he crashed into  _again,_ and the last thing Donnie saw was the enormous green foot coming towards him.

It was in that moment that the monster felt something strange as soon as his foot stopped its movement…like, it was levitating from the earth instead of touching it.

Under the monstrous paw, Donnie was still alive and in one piece, sweat forming around his face. He frantically moved his hands over him, where a trembling blur in the air revealed the presence of a force field.

 _I can't keep this up!,_ he thought as he darted away from the hazardous position. The shield was able to sustain itself for some moments before disappearing, giving Donnie enough time to escape before everything under the foot was reduced to dust.

Now the monster was  _mad._  Donnie knew he had little time, so he decided to modify a little the previous tactic with the straight forward kick. He moved his hands up-and-down, and a second after a force field appeared in front of him. He thereafter charged towards the giant being, hands forwards and keeping the shield active.

Oblivious to the addition, the monster growled and stood up on the two posterior legs, proceeding to throw back the right one in preparation for a powerful kick. When Donnie was fifty meters away from him, the monster attacked, and the boy hoped that he wasn't going to be slammed to the ground for the third time.

At the impact, there was no sound… except for the loud lament of pain coming from the monster and the disturbing noise of giant bones breaking.

Donnie immediately retreated, just in time as sharp claws tried to reduce him to Swiss cheese. The force field had actually given more momentum to Donnie's attack, and now the monster was visibly moving with a limp. What Donnie needed now was a way to make the beast fall.

After the nth angry roar the monster charged forward, demolishing everything in his way. He was furious, but that also meant he was distracted and vulnerable.

When the monster reached him, the beast tried to go with a direct punch, which hit nothing but air. Donnie, instead of moving back, began circling around the monster's arm in order to get nearer to his head. The move was effective, as the disoriented monster limited himself to shake his arm in a pathetic attempt to shoo away the kid.

After some seconds, Donnie found himself face to face with the titan. The being opened its massive mouth and leaned forward in an attempt to eat the kid in one bit, but Donnie was actually expecting him to do this. He didn't move, but something light blue shined in his hands before he disappeared behind the monster's fangs.

The lizard was already going to celebrate when something exploded inside his mouth, and an entire series of teeth was literally shot away from his jaw. Through one of the newly opened holes Donnie flied away, leaving the death trap behind him. He immediately turned in order to react to a possible retaliation, but nothing attacked the boy.

The monster was too much preoccupied in moaning and trying to soothe the pain in his mouth. Actually, he was so distracted he completely failed to see the water tank he stumbled over while walking back. The monster showed an immensely surprised face while he fell to the ground, causing the earth to rumble loudly around him.

Donnie crossed his hands and waited patiently for the monster to get up, something that actually required an entire minute of struggle by the battered lizard. When the giant was confident of the equilibrium he had reached, he glared at the boy for a single second before eventually turning the opposite way and escaping in the direction of the great lake which occupied the East side of Ultrapolis.

Donnie didn't actually believe it until the last green scale disappeared into the deep waters.  _I… I did it!,_ he thought,  _I've beaten him! I've defeated my first monster!_

Donnie had more than one motif to be happy of this achievement. For the last six months he had done nothing too much different from helping old women's cats to get down from trees. To be honest, he had thwarted two heists in two different banks preventing anyone from getting hurt, and he had helped the police more than one time, but that was it, and Donnie couldn't help but think about the extraordinary deeds of the three superheroines who still were his reference model.

Of course, he didn't want Ultrapolis to be invaded by mad genius monkeys, infernal demons or irascible hillbillies. His only goal was to show to the entire town that he had changed, that hewasn't the same one and that he wanted to remedy to the damage he had caused in the first months of his life.

Donnie hoped that the defeat of this monster, one beatable only by a true superhero, was going to give an important blow to the prejudices people still carried about him. While he would have needed to investigate about  _how_  a giant monster had appeared in the lake, as it was basically the first one which attacked the city from the date of foundation, Donnie was too much in good mood to think about it now. He still had something to do before he could go home, and this time he sure didn't want to be late.

After waiting for some additional seconds, just in case the reptile returned for a comeback, the boy hastily whirled and zapped away in the direction of the city centre.

While he flied, Donnie couldn't help to give some quick glances to the people under him. In the previous months, he had examined every face he could see, searching for something different from anger, hatred, disgust, doubt and hostility. The remembrance of what he had done was hard to forget, and Donnie couldn't really blame them. He only hoped that this recent event could change things.

During the travel towards the Town Hall, Donnie didn't find any of the usual emotions over the townspeople features, replaced by indifference, curiosity and… gratitude?

Maybe he had just been lucky… or maybe something had really changed!

Soon Donnie found himself in front of the entrance to Ultrapolis' Town Hall, a construction which, to put it simply, erupted modernity from every hole. It was built with a classic steel metal frame, but almost all the external walls were made of glass. From every room of the tall building it was possible to see the city ahead and, over a certain height, below. It somewhat resembled the design of the palaces who hosted the most important meetings of the countries part of the European Union.

Donnie approached the wooden black door, huge compared to his size, and opened it. Nobody in the busy crowd around him tried to stop him or whatsoever. In fact, they didn't even acknowledge his presence, apart from some rare glances directed towards him. Everyone was used to his presence: in any case, it was his duty to come and talk with the Mayor of Ultrapolis about what he had done.

The boy had to take the stairs in order to reach the first floor of the Town Hall, where the Mayor's office was located. He calmly proceeded towards the room and timidly waved at the Mayor's secretary, who happily saluted back. That woman had a rather joyful behaviour and for the first period she was the only person in the entire administration that dared to smile at him.

Her response meant that the Mayor was waiting for him, as expected.

Donnie sighed, tried to look calm, and entered the office.

What greeted him was a stunningly austere workroom, though visitors could still be amazed by the sight visible through the glass walls around. It only hosted some simple cacti plants, two chairs for guests, various lockers, two medium sized bookcases and the desk of the Mayor of Townsville.

"Ah, Donnie.  _Saluton._ I was waiting for you," the mayor greeted formally.

" _Saluton…_ Are we going to speak in English, Mayor?" Donnie responded and asked, perplexed by the language chosen by the Mayor. After all, Esperanto was Ultrapolis' official language.

"Yes, we are. We both talk fluently it, but some exercise here and there is not going to harm us, is it?" the Mayor said as he turned off his computer and stood up from his chair.

Donnie smiled. Actually, he had been talking more English than Esperanto during the last months. It was a way to keep him fresh with the new language, and he sure didn't want to already forget it. After all, Aunt Katja had told him that basically all people in Ultrapolis knew  _at least_ English as second language. It was a city created to be international in every way.

The Mayor of Ultrapolis circled the desk and went to stand right in front of the yellow puff. This Mayor was the exact polar opposite of his naïve Townsville's counterpart: he was a tall man who wore a formal suit and tie, cloth who couldn't really hide the first signals of ageing. The Mayor was an about fifty-years old man who had a long career in politics, and he basically considered his role in Ultrapolis as the peak of it. He had learned to use power in the most efficient possible way, and many had questioned if he actually had some morals out of the ones he used to gain the voters' support.

It was probably a blessing that this man had already been elected Mayor when Donnie had made his return to Ultrapolis, six months ago. The question of the 'Little Superhero' or 'Devil's Pawn', the name changed depending on the side chosen, had quickly become the main object of discussion in the entire city. But the Mayor had rejected both solutions: sending Donnie to some unknown laboratory to be imprisoned and studied, or just accept him as he was right away.

Donnie remembered how he had been called by the Mayor himself and how the two of them had made a personal pact, even though it was one between him and the entire town in a way. Donnie had accepted at the time to see the use of his powers limited. He couldn't fly around, he couldn't use his energy or force powers, he could only act as the little kid he looked like… unless asked. Because every time a high tier problem appeared in time, there was a chance that the Mayor would have called for Donnie's help.

So, in the past six months, Donnie had worked to protect the city, but only if necessary. Sometimes the little boy had doubts, and he wondered if he was actually fighting crime like his American friends or if he was being tested by the weird man. After all, he had to wait for some time before he was asked to do something a bit more important than saving cats. But until now, the Mayor had had only good words for him, though he had never smiled, and no kind of punishment had to be used. Donnie was actually good with the pact. Even though he had been under the control of the powerful demon, he was still the one who had terrorized the city, and the first motif for his return was to try and fix things.

"I have watched you while you fought with that titan, Donnie. You did well. God knows what we would have done without your help," the Mayor said, his expression indecipherable as always.

He walked around, like he usually did when he talked for more than ten seconds, "Your show had raised at lot of commotion in the city as usual, but this time it was definitely bigger. I can already see the journals tomorrow with the main title: 'The Savior of Ultrapolis'."

Donnie tried his best to remain calm. Maybe this was the moment where the tests ended and he was recognized as a true superhero?

"Nevertheless, I can also see some other titles like 'Giant lizard attacks the city,' with the subtitle 'Is the mutant kid responsible for its arrival?' "

The sparks of hope inside Donnie were disintegrated as the Mayor continued imperturbably his speech, "You know, there were various articles written about how the Powerpuff Girls actually increased the attack rate of the monsters directed towards their city, and on the internet there are groups forming which state that the giant lizard had appeared only because of you, Donnie."

Donnie watched the ground gloomily. Here it was, all his efforts had been useless again.

"I personally think that those ideas are quite imaginative, but completely untrue."

Donnie blinked and stared at the Mayor, dumbfounded.

"Reality is, they are blinded by their hostility towards you to see the pollution problem with the factories aside the lake that I have been trying to resolve for the last five years myself. I was surprised to see only one of those beasts emerge from those waters, to be honest."

The Mayor finally watched Donnie directly in the eyes, and the boy felt like he was being inspected in his inner soul, "Members of the Committee had also accused you of being the cause of a supposed increase in criminality. But those are still suppositions, and there can be dozens of other reasons for that."

The Mayor broke eye contact with the little boy and walked towards a new recent addition to the office Donnie had not noticed. It was a tiny table which supported something, though both the object and the table were concealed by a simple brown-coloured wool cover. The implications of that sight were so big that Donnie nearly fell down to his knees.

"All of this is for saying that, in my honest opinion, you have struggled for enough time Donnie."

With a fast move, the Mayor picked up the cover and removed it, revealing the hidden object under. It was a simple grey, digital cordless phone, not even the most modern model available on the market, of which the charging station was red coloured. The strange things was, its buttons were all blank with the exception of the buttons for making and accepting calls. It was like the phone, this way, could only call for one number. But that meant…

The Mayor suddenly put himself between Donnie and the little table and kneeled down to his own height, something he had never done before. He was keeping something in his right hand, but Donnie had not the time to imagine what it could be as the man handed it over at once.

"This is your personal pager, Donnie. It's obviously more advanced than it looks: we can talk to each other with it through this phone, even at very long distances," the Mayor explained as he pointed at the cordless behind him, "and it can also receive coordinates and tell you where to go in the city. It's a little present of mine for your new status."

Donnie slowly looked up to the Mayor. His eyes were definitely teary, though not of sadness, but of complete euphoria.

At this sight, the Mayor just had to abandon his formal composure and smiled, for the first time since Donnie's first encounter with him.

"Obviously, you're supposed not to lose it. You know, it's  _very_ expensive. Got it?"

Donnie found it hard to believe that this Mayor was the same one who had watched every one of his movements with detached analysis for the past months.

"G-… Got it… Th-.. Thanks…" were the only words Donnie was able to babble as an answer.

"You're welcome. Do not fail me or the citizens of this city. Now you have our faith, but it's up to you to use it wisely," he reached out with his hands and once again stupefied Donnie by messing up his hair, "you're a good child. Go home now: this is your first day out of our little pact, and the first day where you're free to use your powers as much as you want."

Donnie did not wait for the Mayor to repeat himself. He gave him a fast nod before turning on his hells and running away from the buil- scratch that. He  _flied_ through the entire thing, leaving behind him swirls of air that messed up more than one accountant's work, but Donnie was too happy to care now. Half of the employees gave him angry stares… the other half laughed at his passage.

He was free! He was ready to take the next level and actually become for Ultrapolis what the girls were for Townsville!

Professor Laurentium would have been proud of him. Or better, he  _was_ proud of him right now, to put it more like how he liked to think about him.

This was one of the best days of his life.

* * *

Donnie spent a single minute of flight to reach the small flat he lived in. When he had returned to Ultrapolis, the child had thought at first that he would surely have had to go back sleeping in the alleys inside cardboards. He actually would have accepted that, he wasn't in the position to make requests anyway, but Aunt Katja, his creator's cousin, had other ideas.

Donnie had only known of the woman thanks to the few notes about her written on Professor Laurentium's journal, including the role that her single visit had in the process of his birth. That meant that when she stepped forward and greeted him as a nephew, he was surprised to see her in the real world and probably would have refused her offer if it wasn't for her insistence. Afterwards he had learned to respect her, with the fact that not only she had to cope with his creator's death similarly to how he did, but that her husband Thomas and their two sons had right away made clear that they didn't like the idea of the puff living with them.

He felt an enormous gratitude towards her, and he'd always tried to pay back the help she had given him. That was true even now, when for the first time he entered the flat directly through the kitchen's window.

"Hello Donnie!" Aunt Katja said smiling. She had transferred to Ultrapolis with her family only one year ago, and therefore she usually spoke in English with him. "You look happy. I guess something important has happened today, hasn't it?"

Donnie needed five second to register her reaction. Wasn't she surprised by the fact he had  _flown_ into the building? That didn't make sense! Unless…

"You know?" he simply asked.

"Woops… I'm not really a good actress, huh?" she giggled, "the Mayor himself has called to tell us about your new  _status,_ to use his words." It wasn't strange that the Mayor had called Donnie's new home. In his will to have everything under control, he personally contacted and kept informed both Katja and her husband about Donnie's situation and what he did during his trips in the city. It was another thing that was supposed to stop happening from that day.

Which reminded Donnie of the good news he had brought with him, which immediately made him leap at her Aunt and hug her, stopping her attempt to say her congratulations.

"I did it!" Donnie almost shouted, "Look! He gave me this!".

For Katja it was quite unexpected to see Donnie put much importance on what was at first impact a simple pager, but she didn't want to stop Donnie's fast speech, who at the moment was acting exactly like the kid he looked like, laughing and explaining at the same time excitedly. After ten seconds she had to join him, and thus they didn't notice the entrance of a third figure in the room, who sat down at the kitchen's table before announcing his presence.

"Well, well, it seems like there is some happiness in the air….?" Uncle Thomas commented with a neutral face. As soon as the second 'well' had left the man's mouth, Donnie immediately separated himself from his aunt and looked around, like he wanted to make sure that he didn't hit anything during the commotion. Donnie was afraid of his uncle, who had been the most hostile member of the family towards him and had always stated his opposition to his presence. Even though their relationship had largely improved during the last two months, Donnie was still scared of him. Figures that a simple human could actually fright him more than the giant lizard he had just beaten half an hour before.

"Relax, Donnie. It's the big one today after all, isn't it?" he said while what could be confused for a smile appeared on his face. That scene had the only effect to make Donne feel even more awkward.

"We're all proud of you, Donnie," Katja continued, the smile never leaving her face, "Your father would have been proud of you as well…"

Donnie nodded his agreement. That was one of the few things he was one hundred per cent sure of.

"You know, Donnie," Uncle Thomas resumed, "That thickhead of a mayor has suggested us to give you some type of prize for all the hard work you had done for Ultrapolis, and frankly I cannot disagree with him. I must admit you really need some time to rest. So we and Katja have reached a little agreement."

Donnie moved his gaze to her aunt, whose grin was wider than ever. "Jimmy and Jonathan are leaving in two weeks. We had a big stroke of luck, because the two of them will have the school trip in the same two weeks, and that gives us a big occasion we cannot waste. They have already told me and Thomas that they don't mind using their room while they're away."

Donnie had also succeeded in gaining the confidence of her aunt's two sons, so he wasn't surprised by their willingness to leave their room free to use. The question was, for what?

"You have gone visiting your American friends only two times from your arrival here, Donnie. It's time to reciprocate the favour."

For the second time that day, Donnie felt his legs collapse and didn't fall to the ground only because of pure luck.

"Wait, aunt… Are you-… are you telling me that…?" Donnie was bewildered over measurement. In less than one hour he beat for the first time a giant monster, he was officially free to use his powers and unofficially elected a superhero, and now they…

Uncle Thomas stood up as for leaving the room, but not before gesturing for the phone located on one of the kitchen's cupboards.

"Go on, call them. You really don't want to wait more than you should."

With that, he left for another chamber, but Donnie executed his order nonetheless. He literally rushed for the phone, but before starting to dial up a number he wouldn't have forgotten for all the gold in the world, he watched Katja, looking for a confirmation of sorts. The woman smiled again and motioned him to continue.

Donnie sighed. He called  _them_ every weekend, and now it was Tuesday. He hoped both to find them home  _and_ not disturb either them or the Professor, but Uncle Thomas was right, if he'd dared to wait he probably would have exploded.

In a moment, the number appeared on the screen, and after the usual seconds needed for an international call it began beeping into Donnie's ear.

The next ten seconds seemed like hours to the little kid, but they soon ended as the phone clicked and a certain male voice answered the call.

"Hello, this is Professor Utonium. What can I do for you?"

Donnie swallowed and tried his best not to babble, "Ahem… uhm… Professor… it's me, Donnie…"

"Ah, Donnie! Nice to hear you! Is there something wrong? You usually call us on Sundays."

"No, no, Professor, we're all good. I don't want to disturb you…"

"Go on, go on, I was preparing a little afternoon snack for the girls, but I can continue later."

"The girls?" Donnie was once again surprised by his luck. He knew that the girls usually passed their afternoons at school. "Are they home?"

"To be precise, they're in their room at the moment. You should know, Mojo Jojo with his last plan has turned Pokey Oaks into a crater, so they're three or four days out until their teacher can find a temporary place to continue their lessons. Do you need to talk with them?"

"Yes, but I… I think I must ask you before. Aunt Katja and Uncle Thomas have agreed to let me… uhh… to let me  _invite_ the girls to.. to go here, in Ultrapolis."

There were some seconds of silence, during which Donnie thought that Professor Utonium was going to begin screaming into the telephone. But of course, the boy had known the Professor for too little time.

"That's a great idea, Donnie! You know, the same thought has passed through my mind more than one time. The  _girls_ themselves had talked with me about it. I guess they're very curios to visit the city they know only thanks to your descriptions."

With that, he heard something moving and the Professor's voice again, "Girls! Answer the phone and turn on the speakerphone. It's Donnie, he needs to talk with you!"

Before the channel was changed the Professor had just the time to tell an astonished Donnie, "No need to thank me!"

Maybe he didn't really want to be declared that way, but it wasn't really important. Donnie waited for some seconds but no one said anything, so he slowly asked, "…girls? Are you there?"

"DONNIE!" a chorus of three voices fired back, and he was right away overwhelmed with a flow of words ranging from questions to comments to declarations to salutes and so on.

"Donnie! How you're you doing, kid?" Buttercup began.

"You've never called us during the week! Has something bad happened there?" Blossom questioned.

"Donnie! I'm so happy to hear from you!" Bubbles said.

A lone tear escaped one of Donnie's eyes. He just couldn't stop it, every time he heard the Powerpuff Girls' voices, it went out like a mechanical reaction. And every time he had to be the one to stop their simultaneous chat before Uncle Thomas could complain about the price of the international call.

"Girls! Girls!" he said until he was sure there was silence in the room on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, "One at a time, or we'll stay there forever… and anyway, I have to ask you something… ugh. You know, I've been guest to your house more than one time… and I thought that maybe we could… do stuff, ahem, like the other way around… If you like the idea too…"

Donnie's attempt was stopped by the girls themselves, specifically Blossom who as usual was the first one to link the dots together and realize what Donnie was trying to ask them.

"You want us to go and visit you there? In Ultrapolis?" she said with a tone that had a little hint of expectation.

"uuhmm… yeah, something like that…" Donnie confirmed. He would have wanted to add in details, but the girls once again prevented him from talking, though this time they remembered about the 'talking-one-at-a-time" rule.

"Donnie, that's a wonderful idea! We've always wanted to visit you one day or another!" Blossom exclaimed.

"Yeah! You know, I'm pretty curios to see if the criminals there are something worth fighting with!" Buttercup immediately joked.

"You need to show us the entire city! The monuments, the landmarks everyone you know, everything!" Bubbles listed, visibly the happiest one out of the three, which is saying something given how much happy the other two were.

"But you're sure we can? Have you already told the Professor? What about your aunt and uncle?" Blossom inquired, preoccupied by the possible opinions of the people she mentioned.

"The Professor has already told me he's good with it, and as for Katja and Thomas, they were actually the ones who proposed the thing in the first place. No need to worry, Blossom," Donnie said, smiling at how the redhead wanted to make sure that there weren't any problems with their idea.

"You know what? You're inviting us only because you can challenge me again and play at home. Aren't you?" Buttercup teased.

Donnie chuckled at the remark. Buttercup and him had been challenging each other during the previous times he had visited them, silly things like races of various sorts, but the brunette had still proved to be a hard opponent to beat. "Maybe, Buttercup. Or maybe you're the one who's actually scared to play away from  _your_ home…"

The strike was effective, but Buttercup had not the chance to retort as Bubbles interjected, "When are we going then? I'm sooo looking forward to see you Donnie!"

Donnie thought he had heard some type of little giggle, but he wasn't totally sure about it. The noise was followed by Bubbles' protest, "Hey! What's so funny?"

He continued talking with the Powerpuff Girls for some additional minutes, telling them the when and where with the help of Aunt Katja.

When he finally put down the phone, a second tear streamed down one of the yellow eyed boy's cheek.

Now it was  _definitely_ the best day of his life.

* * *

_**More than six thousand kilometres away….** _

"CURSES!"

Mojo Jojo, the most intelligent being in the world, the terror of Townsville, one of the worst enemies of the human race… was bellowing his discomfort.

"CURSES! CURSES! CUURSEEES!"

The chimpanzee was walking with heavy footsteps in his observatory main hall, following a circular path. "Wretched, insufferable Powerpuff Girls!"

Mojo Jojo had just returned to his lair after miraculously escaping his three little nemesis. He was so sure that this plan was going to work, that this was going to be the day where the accursed girls would have been pulverized and disposed of, but he had been wrong, once again. How it was possible that a genius like him, an entity so much superior to the other inhabitants of this city, could be repeatedly defeated by a bunch of kindergarteners?

"CURSES!" was the only answer Mojo Jojo could think of. He finally abandoned his walking pace and headed for another part of the observatory, where most of his weapons were located. He glanced at every one of them: "How can it be? For what reason I, Mojo Jojo, persist in being beaten? Why do my perfect plans continue to… malfunction?"

Furious as he was, he kicked one of the machines, some type of laser turret which crumbled right after being hit, shouting, "Why are the Powerpuff Girls still alive?!"

"Jeez, Mojo, calm down! What happened, you forgot your daily banana ration or somethin'?"

Mojo Jojo seethed at the remark. The day seemed to be getting worse and worse.

He slowly turned his head to face the three intruders that had dared to enter his observatory without announcing themselves. The problem was, the Rowdyruff Boys didn't need any announcement.

"You chose the most wrong time of them all to come here, boys. That is to say, you should turn on your heels and leave immediately before I consider resort to extreme measures!"

"Relax, Mojo," the redhead boy that insulted him before said, the one he considered the most annoying out of the three, "You're not even going to realize we've been there. Right boys?"

"You said it, Brick!" another black haired one replied as he began testing the strength of his punches on one of Mojo's battle bots. The last blond one seemed to be more interested in one of his personal laser rifles.

Normally Mojo Jojo would have begun screeching until the boys stopped their rude behaviour, but by now he was too much focused on his main problem to care. After all, these things they were ruining had been part of plans that had already made their course. In other words, scrap.

After the reconciliation between the evil genius and the demon known as Him, the Rodwyruff Boys had begun visiting both of them regularly. Mojo Jojo didn't really care about what they were doing when they weren't at the observatory, because to him the boys were not much more than a remembrance of a past failure. Maybe the additions made by that weird Him had something to do with it, the boys were much different now from his first design, but nevertheless he couldn't really be interested by them if they continued to be defeated by the Powerpuff Girls similarly to how he did. He would surely have been more inclined to not get angry at them if they brought the heads of the accursed girls to him.

Which made Mojo remember about the recent events, which also made him curse again aloud. Brick eyed him with an almost amused face before losing any interest and walk away to join his brothers.

The mischievous monkey looked around and in the end left himself fall on a chair he normally used to relax while thinking of the next plan. He absently observed the Rowdyruff Boys while they played with, and therefore destroyed, his collection of machines of various sorts. Brick was still walking without a final destination, looking for something that could remove the boredom visible on his face, while Butch had succeeded in activating two battle bots and was laughing aloud while the two of them fought stupidly each other. Boomer was still trying to understand how to shoot with the laser rifle he had stolen.

Boomer… who did the boy remind him of?

When the memory returned to Mojo's mind, his hands clenched the sides of the chair. Because Mojo now had more than three little problems to deal with. His main goal had always been taking over the world, and until now he had believed the Powerpuff Girls to be the main and only obstacle to reach that objective. Six months ago, after his umpteenth voyage to jail, the obstacles had grown in number from three to four.

"Dimwit of a boy..." the monkey muttered while one of the fighting battle bots exploded, much to Butch's delight. He knew that one day or another he would have had to deal with him again, he had looked for information and had found out that the fourth superkid had settled somewhere in Europe and was defending a city just like the girls did in Townsville. It wasn't only a problem of getting him off his path towards world domination: Mojo was no fool and knew that, if the boy knew that his little friends were in trouble, would have sprinted to go help them. Facing three superheroes was a problem, but four of them? That was something he should have avoided if possible.

Maybe he had to destroy him now that he was alone. The yellow puff was powerful, but he was young and inexperienced. Without him a quarter of the thorns in his side would have disappeared, and he would have been able to focus his efforts on the Powerpuff Girls.

 _Yes,_ he thought,  _I should strike now, when my nemesis and him do not expect it. But how?_

Mojo had not the chance to brainstorm ideas as a laser beam suddenly passed on his side, missing his protected brain by a few centimetres. The evil monkey right away reacted by bellowing the name of the responsible of the incident: "BOOMER!"

Boomer looked like he was scared by the furious monkey. He found the ground suddenly more interesting than anything else in the room as the footsteps of his irritated first creator approached him and eventually his shadow loomed over him. Butch and Brick were watching him from a distance, and they looked like they enjoyed the show.

"What in the world were you trying to do? I may let you use my powerful inventions one day every ten decades, but trying to harm my extremely valued life is something else! Now tell me why I shouldn't get that rifle and shoot it into your mouth!"

"I… ahem… dunno… it was an incident, you know… tee hee…" Boomer stuttered, trying to sound sincere. Mojo was obviously not affected by the display, and he would have described the ten ways he was going to torture him when something hit him. Boomer raised his head when no one spoke for ten seconds straight and he was surprised to see Mojo Jojo watch him, then turn to his brothers, then watch him again. He did so for about twenty seconds, before eventually stopping. His anger had mysteriously disappeared… in its place there was an evil smile.

"Hey, Mojo, maybe your brain has finally short circuited?" Butch joked.

"Oh, not in the slightest, little Butch," Mojo replied with a quiet and strangely soothing tone, "To be honest, I have been too much hard with you, Boomer. My apologies."

Boomer made a step back, unsure if the one talking to him was actually Mojo or someone else. Butch was bewildered as well, but Brick was enough smart to know that Mojo was up to no good.

"Forget it, Mojo," he stated, "We'll not help you in one of your stupid plans, plots and whatsoever."

"Well, Brick, who said I was going to ask for  _your_ help?"

Mojo Jojo had put a strong accent on the 'your' word. Choice that had the effect the evil genius expected: Brick quirked an eyebrow and crossed his arms, "Hmph, what, are you trying to tell us that you're going to ask for someone else help? Like we care…"

"You're right, Brick," Mojo explained, "I am going to ask for someone else help. You know, when you see someone who's definitely better in every way than you three, you cannot not to be interested by it…"

"Hey! Who's better than  _us?"_ Butch asked, already feeling offended by the monkey's speech.

"Maybe you used to be stronger, maybe you have weakened during the past months, but nonetheless, my future co-operator will definitely be of more help than any of you, or you three altogether, could be."

"Weakened? Are you nuts, Mojo?" Butch was now angry, "We're the Rowdyruff Boys! Nobody is stronger than us!"

"Not even the stupid Powerpuff Girls!" Boomer added, feeling insulted as well. However, the phrase had the only effect to gain a punch directly from the boys' leader. While Boomer scratched his head, Brick fixed Mojo with a cold glare that could have scared anyone… except for the wicked primate.

"Say… Not that I believe your words, but who is this guy?"

Mojo grinned. His plan was working perfectly.

"Oh, I haven't come yet to know his name, but he's currently living somewhere in Europe. The good boy had already helped me once, and he had proved to be-…"

"I don't care what he did to help you, Mojo," Brick interrupted, "I don't even care about what's going on in your mind right now. My only concern is to meet this show-off you're talking about and see if he is as strong as like you say, something which I highly doubt about. In either case, we'll see who is stronger when this 'boy' will be crying at my feet!"

Mojo Jojo tried his best not to laugh aloud. He didn't even need to lie! Except for the part where he said he needed the yellow puff's help, but that was just a side detail.

"I bet the coward will bolt like a little rabbit as soon as he sees us!" Butch said, completely agreeing with the red capped boy.

"We'll show him who's the weakest!" Boomer chimed in. Brick limited himself to roll his eyes this time, and afterwards he said, "Let's go!"

The Rowdyruff Boys finally left Mojo observatory, of course crashing into the roof and producing a new hole in the already battered ceiling. But for once, Mojo was not annoyed by it.

The Rodwyruff Boys may have not been able to beat the girls… but what could a single puff do against the three of them?

The answer was simple: nothing. Mojo Jojo launched himself in an evil laugh. One problem was solved, he only needed to make sure of the result in a few days or so. Now to deal with the other three…

Before he could start up the project of a new plan, a ringing sound echoed in the chamber. It was Mojo Jojo's phone. Normally Mojo Jojo would have just left the thing ring unanswered or zap it with his laser pistol, but his mood had improved during the last five minutes and he decided to personally greet the caller. Not to talk with him, mind you, he would have just stated he had not time to chat when his duty called him.

To be honest, it was hard someone called him at all, but he didn't find it strange at all. After all, he was dreaded in the entire city and beyond.

Mojo Jojo picked up the receiver and said in a slightly annoyed tone, "I have not the time to talk about your pathetic problems, whoever you are, as I, Mojo Jojo, have more important matters to attend to, and therefore I cannot in any way put myself in something different from finding a way to destroy the Powerpuff Girls. And this means that…"

Despite those words, the caller did not gave up. He or she said something that succeeded in stopping Mojo's speech, as he said "Hmph, you say an advantage, huh? Continue and hope it's something worth my time…". The evil genius calmly listened to what the caller had to tell him.

After half a minute, Mojo Jojo finally said, "This is… much interesting. I must say it's something that can actually help me in my goals. Yes… Your offer is good, and I might help you…  _what was your name?"_


	2. Confrontation

**Two weeks later…**

"BOOMER!"

The blue ruff stiffened at the call. Was it already time to leave?

"What?" he answered with a definitely not friendly tone, but his caller wasn't fazed at all by it.

"Stop whatever you're doing and come here! Brick's found something!"

Boomer sighed and gave a last glance to the piece of modern art he was working on before floating away towards his brothers. Brick was holding what seemed to be some type of newspaper in his hands. The nearby news-stand was completely desert of life… probably the newsman had thought better to ask the red ruff to pay for the copy.

"Uhmm… do you read French?" Boomer asked, baffled by the sight.

"What do you think I am, a four eyes nerd? This is some type of international thing or whatever they call it, so it's English… Look there you two."

He motioned him and Butch to join him at his sides and the two of them respected the order: they were curious to see if their search had come to an end at last.

The main title on the first page was quite tell-tale on its content:

' _EXCLUSIVE: ULTRAPOLIS' NEW HERO!'_

Brick didn't even try to read out the rest of the article: he limited himself to watch for a moment the photo of this supposed hero before tossing away the journal, much to Boomer's surprise.

"Hey!" he protested, but Brick ignored him. "Let's go. The faster we deal with the dimwit, the earlier we'll return home."

"Finally!" Butch commented, "If we had to look for him for another week, I would have died of boredom!"

"But guys! What about my…" Boomer began, but Brick shushed him, "I don't care, Boomer. Or are you perhaps scared of the guy?"

"Boomer's scared! That's not a surprise…" Butch added, snickering while him and the group's leader zapped away.

"Huh? I'm not scared! And I'll show you!" Boomer responded before flying away, scrambling to follow them.

So the Rowdyruff Boys left the city they were momentarily taking a break in and headed for the east. Leaving behind them a good number of fires, screaming people everywhere, the Louvre glass pyramid turned upside down, and the metal frame of the Eiffel Tower modified into a twisted form.

* * *

_It's four o'clock…_

_It's two past four…_

_It's four past four…_

_It's-…_

"Donnie?"

The yellow eyed boy stopped to stare at the wall-clock and watched his aunt. The woman smiled as she already knew what he was thinking about, "Don't worry, Donnie. They will arrive in Ultrapolis safe and sound."

"But aunt, why can't they just fly their way down here?"

"Donnie, I know you are worried, but they're my guests just like they're yours, and I want to make them feel as much confortable as possible. Isn't that what you want as well?"

Donnie sighed in defeat before nodding.

"Exactly. Now relax, you'll come with me at the airport after all…"

Despite the reassuring words of the Slavic accented woman, Donnie focused once again his attention on the slowly moving arrows inside the clock.

To be honest, he knew he was overthinking things. They were talking about the Powerpuff Girls after all, the same girls who fought the most perilous fights of the planet on a daily basis. The only motive they were using a plane instead of just going in Ultrapolis themselves was the will of both Aunt Katja and the Professor, who both wanted to give the girls the most classic holiday possible.

Their logic made sense even to him in a way; thus, Donnie resigned himself to sit on the chair for another half an hour. At least, that's what he thought until he heard something beep and vibrate at the same time.

The source of the disturbance was located on the table in front of him.  _The pager._

Donnie right away snatched the device and activated it. Immediately the beeps were substituted by the voice of the Mayor.

"Donnie, we're sorry to disturb you  _now,_ but we have a problem. Multiple chiefs of Police have reported a series of disorders downtown. Apparently the officers cannot stop whoever is causing havoc, but according to the ones who tried to capture them, they're super powered beings."

The remains of good mood inside Donnie disappeared. "This is probably something only you can solve, Donnie. I'm sending you the location of the last sighting. Be fast."

Donnie hesitated for a single second before firmly answering, "I'm on it, Mayor."

The Mayor simply said a 'good' of acknowledgement before cutting off the line. On the display of the pager appeared a series of numbers which later turned into a description of the place where his help was needed.

Normally, he would have sprinted right through the kitchen's window, but it was not a day like others. Donnie gazed at his aunt with a look full of worry.

"Donnie, go. I'm going to pick the girls myself, and when you will return, you will find them here waiting for you, okay?"

The boy smiled. He probably would never have had the chance to fully repay the woman for what she had done for him.

"Thanks, Aunt Katja!" he said before zapping away through the fortunately already opened window and flying towards the city centre. Katja watched him for some seconds before returning to her current cleaning work. She wasn't worried: after all, Donnie had already been called in the previous months, and he had always returned home sooner or later.

Neither Donnie nor Katja knew about the real danger the little boy was getting himself into.

* * *

Donnie spent five minutes to reach his destination. Afterwards he spent only two seconds to realize the gravity of the 'problem' the Mayor had told him about.

Around him, down in the streets, people ran in panic. Various buildings had multiple fires blazing inside them, and the firefighters were both busy in trying to put out them and the ones burning some, unfortunate cars abandoned on the asphalt. Some of these were patrol police cars, and Donnie didn't fail to notice that some of these particular ones were standing on a side, extremely damaged or with abnormal dents on the body.

For a fraction of a second, an image of Townsville passed over Donnie's mind… the one similar to the current sight in front of him. The boy shook his head, shooing the memory away. This time, he was in control, and he was the one who was putting a stop to this mess.

No matter who caused it.

The yellow puff floated forward, keeping the surroundings under strict control. He didn't want to be found unprepared, even though he had no idea how to deal with the problem as for now.

He had not the chance to think over a plan as something exploded on the street next to the one he was currently located in.

Donnie immediately sprinted away, and at the first intersection he began circling around a skyscapers' base, in order to put himself in the street where the detonation came from.

In mere moments he landed near the site. Something had exploded inside the apartments on the right side, as the panicking people and the smoke coming out were proof of.

He would have marched into the building it if it wasn't for the fact that the three responsible for the happening went outside themselves.

"I didn't even know you could make explosions like that in boring skyscrapers!" Butch exclaimed, visibly enthusiast. Boomer was in a similar mood, given the big smile visible on his face and the sparkles in his eyes.

"A simple hit at the gas implants can do wonders, Butch. I have another idea about that-…"

"STOP RIGHT THERE!"

Finally, the Rowdyruff Boys noticed the similar-looking boy standing in front of them, blocking their way. The Rowdyruff Boys put on hostile faces on instinct, but that was not Donnie's reaction as he realized who was standing there. He knew of course of the Rowdyruff Boys thanks to the girls' stories, and he also knew how they looked like, so he had no problem in comprehend who they were. The problem was, it was the actual first time he met them face to face, and there was also the fact that this happened in Ultrapolis.

"Huh?"

The Rowdyruff Boys were at first surprised by the evident startled look on the dark blonde boy's face. Then, Butch burst out laughing maniacally.

"Well, looks like the monkey's lost some gear in his brains, given how he's asked for YOUR help…" Brick commented dryly, not as amused as his brother.

Boomer would have wanted to add his two cents, had it not been for Donnie, who right away responded, "What, a monkey? What are you talking about?"

Brick raised an eyebrow: "You're even stupider than I thought. C'mon, I know Mojo's not a pleasant guy, but you just can't have forgotten someone like him!"

Donnie pondered over it for some seconds before raising an eyebrow, "I still do not understand what you're trying to tell me. Mojo Jojo has never asked for my help… and I definitely don't want to see him again."

Suddenly, Donnie realized that probably this was all a trick of some sort. "You know what? I don't care. The only thing I'm interested in now is stopping you and send you right where you come from!"

"Wooopsie! The little girl here is mad! Let's get out of here before he hurts us!" Butch said, the ironic tone not hidden.

"Like you actually can stop us!" Boomer said, feeling disgusted by the fact he could even only fathom the event.

"Wait, guys, I'm actually interested on how our hero here is going to try to beat us. Might be fun as well, won't it?"

Butch clapped his hands in agreement, "I want to get him first! I really need to beat someone up who does not faint after the first two punches!"

Boomer would have protested, but once again, much to his displeasure, Donnie interjected: his tone was unexpectedly calm. "Umph, your reputation is real then. I once thought that Blossom was exaggerating about you, but I now think that-…"

"WAIT!" Boomer shouted, making both his brothers and Donnie jump. "Did you say Blossom?"

"Yeah, the Powerpuff Girl. Aren't you three their enemies or something?"

Brick was finding it hard to believe it, "yes, but… but, you know  _her?"_

"Of course I do! She's my friend, just like Bubbles and Buttercup!"

For five seconds the Rowdyruff Boys remained motionless and dumbfounded. Then, they fell to the ground in the same instant and began laughing hysterically.

"Oh my god! I can't-… believe it!" Butch said through the chuckles.

"I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" Boomer  _tried to say_ as he rotated on the ground.

Brick was the first to recover some demeanour… sort of, and he directly spoke to Donnie: "This outweighs everything. A boy, friend of the Powerpuff Girls? I… just… hahaha!"

Donnie shook his head. They were beginning to annoy him, but unbeknownst to them, he still had in mind why he was there and what was his goal. He had no idea why the boys were in the city, but he would have thought about it later. The primary objective now was protecting Ultrapolis and his inhabitants.

Task that required him to someway bring the upcoming battle elsewhere. He had a feeling that he couldn't beat the three of them together, no matter how dumb they acted. The girls had told him about some of their abilities as well.

Maybe hitting now while they were too much occupied in insulting him would have been a good idea.

Thus, Brick, Butch and Boomer were completely taken by surprise… especially Boomer.

He could only gape as something yellow in colour zapped towards him, two pairs of arms grabbed his waist and he was kneed right in the stomach, knocking the air out of his lungs.

A moment after, Donnie flied upwards, bringing with him the momentarily stunned Boomer, and darted away in direction of the countryside around the city. At least the few of it that there was, given the fact that Ultrapolis was mainly surrounded by thick coniferous forests.

The boy glanced behind himself while still moving fast, and he found out that the other two Rowdyruff Boys were already in hot pursuit. They looked quite angry.

Before he could make the next move, however, something punched his face. He had underestimated Boomer's recovering speed: the Rowdyruff Boy, furious for having been brought around like a doll, freed himself from his grasp and proceeded in storming him with a series of punches, ending the attack with a final kick that sent Donnie directly towards the ground below.

However, Donnie recovered in mid-air and didn't even touch the ground. He quickly gained height until he found himself at the same level of the three boys. He watched around only to look if he had at least succeeded in his goal and was glad to find out that he did.

Boomer had literally the fire in his eyes. It seemed like he was really offended by what had just happened.

Therefore, Butch didn't lost the rare chance as he and Brick joined him: "Enjoyed the ride?"

Boomer grunted something in response that Butch did not catch, but Brick evidently did as he hit the poor boy on the head.

"Ouch!"

"Cut it off, you two," Brick ordered before turning eventually towards their new adversary. "Seems like you actually have guts, sissy. Well, I feared that this was going to be boring, but maybe you can actually resist for more than one minute."

"You will see I'm full of surprises…" Donnie replied, putting himself in battle stance.

Brick limited himself to grin at this tease, "At least we now know you're not a dressed up girl or somethin'. Boys, let's show this hotshot who's the best fighter!"

With that, the Rowdyruff Boys prepared themselves for a coordinated attack. Donnie waited patiently as he studied them: he had the advantage as they had no knowledge of his skills, while he at least had an idea of theirs. But it was also true that he was outnumbered… three to one.

He needed some type of tactic in order to keep the three of them at bay, but unfortunately he was out of time. The Rowdyruff Boys sprinted away in three different directions, and Donnie moved back, an attempt to maintain all three colours in his line of sight.

This was going to be  _hard._

* * *

"You said Donnie left off to deal with some type of problem? What kind of problem?"

"Hey, what are we waiting for then? Startin' up an holiday with some action is just what I need!"

"Please, Miss Cunningham, we would really like to go and help our friend. I know he wouldn't be upset if we did!"

Katja couldn't help but roll her eyes at the childlike stubbornness of the three girls following her through the airport main hall, towards the entrance. She had imagined the Powerpuff Girls with many characteristics, but there was one thing she was sure about: the fact that despite all they were still little girls and acted as such, though in their three very unique ways.

Just like Donnie did.

"Yes, I did. And I repeat: don't worry, girls. I'm sure you know Donnie hasn't been doing anything during the last months. I'd even say we'll arrive home with him already there waiting for you."

She heard the green eyed one, Buttercup if she recalled correctly, mumble in disapprobation, but apart from that the three of them remained silent, clearly acknowledging her reassurance.

She smiled. She actually believed in what she said, and she sure didn't want them to feel lonely, worried or tense, even if only for ten-twenty minutes. Thus, she tried to change subject and began talking about the city and possible landmarks they could visit. The girls were immediately entrapped by her speech.

"I don't know if you have already watched on the News or the internet how our Town Hall looks like, but in any case, I suggest you to go inside at least one time. You won't regret it!"

Blossom immediately began making a mental programme of the next days, actually requesting her sisters' help, request which was not fulfilled at first. Especially by Buttercup, who just wanted to live it day by day and decide on the moment what to do.

The beginning of an argument was already in the air, but instead of getting uncomfortable Katja had to restrain himself from giggle while she put their luggage into her car (she had insisted in bringing those herself). She found their arguing too cute.

"Gimme a break, Bloss! We're just landed on Europe and you're already planning this and that and also this and also that! Jeez, relax for a second!"

"Buttercup, you know that a correct and effective planning can maximize our chances to have a good time?"

"All I see is a maximization of your chances to make us sleep at midday!"

Bubbles seemed to be lightly enjoying the show as well. This was far from being one of their most serious fights anyway… this time the two of them were most probably just teasing each other.

Eventually, the girls got into aunt Katja's car and the woman drifted away from the large airport car park, heading for her flat.

While the girls were talking about the first impressions of the city they were finally able to watch with their own eyes, Katja's thought fell on the car's radio. It might have been a bit uneducated to turn it on while the girls were confabulating with each other, but she wanted to prove them that Donnie was okay somehow.

…and she had to admit, she was beginning to get worried… just a little bit. But hey, she had lived with the boy for six months, it would have been strange if she wasn't!

She finally decided to tune in the electronic device while they waited for the red light of a traffic light to turn green. She maintained the volume low, letting the girls continue on their talk if they wanted to.

Yet, the girls immediately stopped speaking as the voice of the announcer came off. Not only because of their superhearing, but also because of the subject… and the seriousness of it.

"Are you with us, Marie?"

"Yes! We're contacting you from the north side of Ultrapolis. Even though we're still located in the outskirts, the sounds of battle are still audible from here!"

It was true: there were the typical whoosh sounds that Donnie usually emitted when he flied around at high speed.  _Far too numerous to be caused only by him._  And along with those, explosions, impacts and other unrecognizable noises in the distance.

Katja thought of herself as an optimistic person, but in this case, even her couldn't help but bit her lip.

The most worrying part of it had not reached their ears yet, though Katja wasn't going to realize why. The girls were.

"Donnie, our recently accepted defender, is fighting with appear to be three super powered beings comparable to him in appearance and powers… most of them. He had been able to hold them out for now, but it seems like he's-… what's that? WATCH-!"

The journalist didn't even have the time to finish the phrase as the four occupants of the car heard the radio emit the noise of something big crashing on the ground.

"You're all right, Marie?" the announcer asked, visibly shocked and momentarily unaware of being on a live radio transmission.

"We're- we're all right… Ahem. The fight is getting serious minute by minute… We all hope that Donnie will be able to solve the situation as soon as possible," the local journalist replied stoically, ignoring the fact she had been inches from being smashed.

"Uuuhh… we sure do, Marie. Stay tuned with us to know all about the last updates on the-…" the following words had already lost of importance to the girls' ears.

"Miss Cunningham, I'm afraid we have to go," Blossom stated. It wasn't a question.

Katja went against a notable struggle to ask otherwise: "Girls, I know it seems serious, but…"

"It's not about the fact it seems serious," Blossom explained, "given how Donnie's enemies were described, we have an idea about who they are. We  _have_  to check out if it's true, because in case it is… Donnie  _is in trouble._ No matter how much strong he had become."

"And if we're right, then it's  _personal,_  and we have to deal with it ourselves," Buttercup added fiercely.

"It's  _very_  important. We're sorry, but we must go now!" Bubbles finished. Then, with a simple wave as last salute, they flied through the back windows of the car they had previously opened.

In that moment the traffic light became green, and Katja mechanically pushed the accelerator on when she heard the first angry horn behind her. Things had happened too fast and she couldn't concentrate on driving and the present problem at once.

That, because she had felt the seriousness in the girls' tone. They were supereroes: they meant it when there was something hazardous to deal with.

She hoped with all her might that the four of them would be all right.

* * *

Donnie raised his head from the ground and spitted out the dirt that had been forced to enter his mouth by the fall. Then, he cleaned his mouth from the extraneous material before finally standing up and retake his battle stance.

Three meters away, Butch chuckled, "Is that all you've got, sissy?"

Donnie did not answer but instead launched himself towards the green ruff, fists forward. But the brunet seemed to be faster than the boy had thought about. He easily avoided the incoming attack, and when Donnie began to bomb him with a flurry of punches from all directions, he dodged every hit without a single mistake.

At least, that remained true until Butch decided he was bored by the current affair. Suddenly, he attacked and directed a powerful kick into the boy's stomach. Unprepared, Donnie found himself unable to move and, therefore, completely helpless as Butch finished the combo with an uppercut who sent the yellow eyed boy away in the air.

This time Donnie was able to recover while flying and he stopped his movement before making another close encounter with the grass under him. He narrowed his eyes as Butch laughed at his supposed weakness.

These guys weren't only unbearable for their characteristic behaviour. They were fast, fearsome fighters, and dangerous foes. When Donnie had used the first force field to protect himself from an energy blast, the boys were unsure of what to do for twenty seconds. Afterwards, they had already found a way to render his technique less effective by teamwork, revealing that if they wanted to do it and the situation needed it, they could be smart.

And now they were literally making fun of him. Boomer and Brick, in fact, waited away from Donnie, and didn't look like they were going to join Butch.

This was an occasion he had to exploit, if he wanted to win against these guys.  _Or survive,_  depending on the point of view.

Ignoring Butch's taunts, Donnie glared at the other two boys and decided which one would become his current target. Brick had completely lost interest in the fight and was by now trying to find something worth his attention, in the opposite direction. He was vulnerable.

In the blink of an eye, the yellow puff dashed away, heading for the red ruff. Boomer had only the time to say, "Hey-…!" before Donnie reached his objective. But Brick was somehow aware of the approaching danger, because he darted away a second before Donnie could reach him.

The attacker persisted in the action and he pursued the escaping ruff. Brick tried at first to fire a series of eyebeams at the yellow streak that was right behind him, but Donnie had already created a frontal force field that absorbed all the hits. Huffing, Brick stopped his attacks and lowered his speed, waiting for the other to engage melee combat with him.

But Donnie modified his path just before encountering Brick. What the red ruff didn't expect, however, was the fact that the yellow puff charged up a standard energy grenade and threw the thing at him. This was a move he had not used against the rowdyruffs yet, so Brick did the only thing he thought was right: avoiding the projectile and nothing more.

Donnie only had to release the mental block to make the ovoidal sphere detonate just at the red ruff's side. The shockwave hit Brick with its full force, and it took him only three seconds to crash on the ground below.

"Are you sure we shouldn't help him?" Boomer inquired, unsure about his brother's idea.

"Relax! This is the part where it gets better!" Butch assured, eager to see the outcome of the last event.

The green ruff was right: Brick slowly floated away from the crash site. He was gritting his teeth and his glare would have frozen a hungry bear in fear.

"Uh oh…" Boomer couldn't help but say. And strangely enough, a similar thought passed through Donnie's mind as well.

The mad ruff charged forward and when he made contact with Donnie, he unleashed a series of attacks that were too fast for Donnie to react to. Quickly he failed to avoid and/or block one punch, two punches, a punch and a kick in succession. Brick did not have mercy: he continued to beat him up even after he lost control of his body.

Finally, Donnie became so weak that he couldn't even maintain himself in air, and he fell away from Brick. The red ruff did not chase him but remained where he was as he regained his breath. His brothers joined him after they were sure he was safe to approach.

Donnie struggled to maintain his eyes open and forced himself to stand up, again. He felt dizzy all over and there was more than one source of pain in his body, but he couldn't stop fighting now. He had to somehow win this. If he failed, Ultrapolis would be at the mercy of those three. There had to be a way to…

He stopped his thought when he heard the voice of the leader one shout an 'ahem!'. He raised his head and watched as the Rowdyruff Boys glared at him.

"We've had enough of you…" Brick snarled, "You don't put up a good fight, and when you do you can't seem to do it straight forward… Now you'll receive a lesson you won't forget easily."

With that, he pointed at him before uttering, "Let's get him, boys!"

The rowdyruffs took off in three different directions... again. Donnie floated up in order to have more freedom of movement, even though his main goal now was trying to remain calm. They were making another coordinated attack, and the first one hadn't ended well for him.

He acted instinctively and began charging up energy grenades which he threw repeatedly at the red and green trails. He tried to predict their paths, but the Rowdyruff Boys had already got into the function of his power and kept their distance from the powerful energy globes.

_They're closing up! I need to do something, before- wait, there's two of them! Where-…_

He had realized the lack of the third ruff too late. Something hard hit his back. At first, Donnie didn't feel anything, not at all. That was, until the electrical shock made his entire body twirl in protest.

This was too much for him, and he screamed in pain just before Brick and Butch reached his sides. Without waiting him to recover, they began to pounce him again and again.

Despite the dire situation, Donnie wasn't going down easily. He bite down the bullet for the pain and tried to counter attack: one of Brick's punches reached for his face, he tried to block, succeeding. He right away snatched the opportunity and grabbed the ruff's arm, much to his surprise, and he rotated the arm 180° degrees, effectively smashing Brick into Butch's head.

But Boomer was still in the surroundings, and the electrical baseball bat hit again. Another shock went through Donnie's body and once again he screamed out against his will, but differently from before Boomer did not wait for his brothers to join the party. He reached out and grabbed Donnie from behind with all four limbs, basically blocking every possibility of movement of the yellow puff. His grip was steel-like, and Donnie's attempts to free himself did nothing but annoy the blue ruff. "Leave me alone!" he shouted, phrase to which Boomer scoffed in response, "What, like you did with me before?"

He stopped struggling when he realized that Butch and Brick were already in front of him. He was totally defenceless now.

"I bet I can make him cry in less than thirty seconds!" Butch challenged, his fists shivering as he was eager to begin the punishment.

"Umph, think as you like. This sissy won't last ten seconds anyway…" Brick commented.

Butch laughed out loud as he put himself in front of Donnie and the first punch began its brief travel towards his cheek. The yellow puff closed his eyes and braced himself for the impact.

But the punch never reached his destination as something hit Butch dead centre. When Donne reopened his eyes, what he saw was a flying Butch and the red particles left from an eyebeam explosion.

"WHAT?!" Brick bellowed, but he couldn't shout more exclamations as he was hit as well.

Boomer, startled by the sudden attacks, lost his grip, and Donnie easily dispatched him with a back knee and a kick in sequence. Before he could continue on, a third eyebeam hit the blond ruff as well. Now that he was free, the boy could finally watch who had just saved him from a very bad situation… though he already had an idea of who they were.

"Girls!"

"Donnie!"

"Powerpuff girls? POWERPUFF GIRLS!? What in the world do we have to do to not see your ugly faces for more than once in a week!?" Brick roared, visibly not happy to see his sworn enemies here, and also because he was struggling to free himself from the concrete wall he was stuck in.

All the three Rowdyruff Boys were momentarily out of commission, and the girls decided to ignore them and meet with their European friend.

"Donnie! Are you all right?" Blossom immediately asked, evidently worried for his state.

"I'm fine, Blossom. They beat me up pretty hard but I'm still good…" Donnie said trying to sound convincing. There were various bruises visible on his body, his clothes had seen better days, and there was a lone trail of blood coming out of his mouth.

Instead of waiting for them to say otherwise, the boy directly watched them with a gloomy look: "Girls… I'm sorry for all of this, I should have known better and-…"

"What? Gimme a break!" Buttercup stopped him, "There was no way you could figure out that those punks were coming here. They're  _our enemies,_ so if there's anyone who has to be accused, that's us!"

"Donnie, just rest for some time while we deal with them," Bubbles continued, "Those meanies will never come here again after we're finished with them!"

"I… oh, okay, you're right," Donnie answered, "but I'm not letting you fight them alone, period. They may be your enemies, but the city they've attacked is mine. It's my duty…"

"Oh man, you seem like the Mayor when he's doing a speech to the citizens, Donnie…" Buttercup commented, rolling her eyes, "…but if that's your wish, we won't stop you."

Blossom had a completely opposite opinion, but Bubbles patted her on her shoulder, and the redhead immediately gave in at the sight of her pleading eyes.

So, the Powerpuff Girls, along with their yellow eyed ally, put themselves in line formation and waited for the Rowdyruff Boys to come after them.

The above mentioned supervillains didn't spend much time to free themselves, anyway. Moments after, Brick, Boomer and Butch flied to put themselves in front of the superheroes' group. All the three of them were quite angry with the newcomers.

"I'm sick of fighting you, Powerpuff Girls," Brick started off, "And I surely didn't like you stopped us while we were havin' fun with your sissy friend there…"

"What, are you escaping from us now, Brick?" Blossom teased, "I have always knew you were coward, but not as coward as this!"

"Well, I have always knew you were a  _twit_  Blossom, and this phrase from you confirms it without a doubt," Brick retorted. He smiled as he saw Buttercup and Bubbles catching their leader in an attempt to stop her from charging at him. "We ain't escaping from anyone. I don't care if we have to fight you and the dimwit at the same time, we can beat the four of you together without a flinch!"

"You say it? How about actually trying it?" Buttercup challenged.

"I'm just waiting for you, Butters!" Butch responded, his body shuddering in excitement.

"Ahem, Brick…" Boomer timidly said, "Are you sure it's a good idea? Because, you know…"

Brick shushed him, or to be more precise, stopped his speech by hitting him on the head. "Of course it's a good idea, idiot. That sissy there is as good as a sloth in fighting, he's probably going to slow down the powerpuffs rather than helping them. C'mon, let's show them what we got!"

With that said, Brick and Butch darted forward, with Boomer who followed them after a moment of hesitation. Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup and Donnie charged as well, and the two groups encountered each other in no time.

* * *

Mojo Jojo observed the scene visible on the display as the clash took place in front of him. He scratched his chin in thought at the new situation, unsure of what to do about it.

He was not in his observatory. The room he was currently located looked similarly to the interior of his lair, alright, with the metal basically in every corner, but the design was far from being his one. It lacked of the perfection Mojo Jojo liked to think was his trademark.

His host was currently somewhere else. When the two of them had assisted together to the first encounter of the Rowdyruff Boys with Donnie, the man looked like he wasn't happy about it at first. He then left without a word a quarter of hour before the Powerpuff Girls joined the show, without a word.

Mojo Jojo wondered how the scientist could possibly be not happy about seeing what he told him was his main target being beaten up by the boys, but as long as he didn't begin to stop them, he couldn't care less.

The genius was actually more curious to know about the reasons that brought him in this surrogate of a laboratory. The man had told him that he needed his help, and that the results would have benefited the villain as well, more specifically about his fight with the Powerpuff Girls. He had promised him to tell him every detail when the time would come, but Mojo Jojo was not a patient person.

"Did you expect that to happen?"

Mojo Jojo turned to face his new colleague, annoyed obviously, "No, I did not. This may be a problem, as I expected the Rowdyruff Boys to be able to annihilate that pathetic superhero effortlessly. With the appearance of the Powerpuff Girls, I believe that this won't happen anymore.  _Curses…"_

"You don't need to worry, Mojo Jojo. I knew this was going to happen."

Mojo Jojo at first believed he had heard it wrong, but then he corrected himself: his colleague must have chosen the wrong words. Thus, it was natural for him to utter, "WHAT?!"

"You need to understand, Mojo Jojo, that I have specific,  _very specific_  plans about Donnie. Plans that need him to be still alive when the experiment will be completed. But do not think that I'll help him or the other infra-humans because I'm at their side."

Mojo Jojo grunted something that may not have been meant to be heard, but the man seemed not to be disturbed by the swearing. Then, the chimpanzee growled, "If that's what you wish, what are we supposed to do now? Wait until the boys get defeated again?"

"No, of course no. Actually the arrival of the Rowdyruff Boys, as you call your creations as, may be a solution to put the other infra-humans under control. Which consequentely gives us a possibility to begin the test right after the experiment is done."

The scientist approached Mojo Jojo and watched directly into his eyes. He was completely at ease even under the hard glare the monkey was directing at him. "I'm leaving to capture Donnie and bring him here. When you see a sudden change in the situation on the stream your drone is capturing, use it to advise the boys about our presence and lead them here."

Mojo Jojo was beginning to get tired of this fanfare. He was not one to just execute orders like a worthless human: "Your behaviour is making my nerves hard to control,  _colleague._  Why should I do as you rudely requested, treating me like puppet in your hands?"

The figure sighed before replying, "I ask you forgiveness for my behaviour, but I repeat, your fight with the infra-humans known as the Powerpuff Girls will benefit from what is going to happen today. Be patient for just some additional hours, and everything will become clear."

That said, the scientist left without even waving at him, leaving the villain alone in the control room. Mojo Jojo wasn't completely happy with his explanation, and by all means he should have already left this stupid and inferior laboratory by now. But he stayed where he was.

He felt something… this man, while being hard to tolerate, knew what he was doing. He was actually curios to see what he had in his mind. After all, he had all four of his enemies right here, and all the scientist was giving him was a hypothetical occasion to destroy the four of them together. Though he still didn't know what he had exactly planned for the European puff.

He decided to give his colleague three or four hours to convince him that he wasn't completely wasting his time here. He returned his focus to the battle his drone was filming: as he had expected, the boys were having a bad time. He would have actually liked to leave them at their destiny, but the scientist was going here, and in any case they would have left without doing anything useful if he didn't intervene.

Thus, Mojo Jojo stood ready near the controls of the drone, waiting for the first sign of the presence of the Doctor.


	3. A New Nemesis

Brick had been thinking about many different things during his fast and uncontrolled flight towards the ground. Many of those thoughts in fact were not so gentle comments about the four heroes who were currently making him and his brothers have a very bad time.

The red ruff crashed with a loud noise and when the dust was cleared away by the wind, he found himself lying on the umpteenth crater.

He quickly stood up, cleaned his long sleeved shirt from the grass, and fired an extremely furious glare at the responsible of his last encounter with the earth.

Blossom did not do anything but smirk in response. She was really loving every moment of this, wasn't she? He would have gone and met her right away to give her a lesson about her behaviour, if it wasn't for the guy who was at that moment floating right at her side. The yellow eyed boy was by now wearing a neutral expression, but Brick had no doubts about the fact that he was liking this as well.

_Jerk._

But jerk or non-jerk, he had underestimated him, and so did Boomer and Butch, who were currently busy keeping Buttercup and Bubbles under control. As soon as the girls had joined the battle, the European guy had showed an ability in teamwork Brick had been sincerely surprised of. His different powers let him do things the girls couldn't do, and with their combined strengths they were easily able to take out the numerous attacks the Rowdyruffs had directed towards them.

If he didn't someway change tactics, soon his two brothers would have been left alone against the four puffs. And that wasn't something he was looking forward to.

Therefore, he at first floated upwards watching his two adversaries. Then, he dashed in the opposite direction, towards the other four combatants.

Donnie and Blossom were initially taken aback by Brick's move, but soon they zapped away in hot pursuit. But the red ruff had still a good advantage over them.

Instead of joining the brawl the greens and the blues were currently fighting in, Brick flied over them shouting an order, "BOOMER, BUTCH, MOVE!"

The blue and green ruff immediately left their counterparts and followed their leader. Buttercup and Bubbles began following their prey almost instantly, and in a few seconds the group pursuing the ruffs increased in number. Their speed was so high that in less than a minute they were far from Ultrapolis' suburbs: soon the first treetops of the fir forests began to substitute lone farms and roads.

"Any ideas, Brick?" Boomer timidly asked in mid-flight. He was definitely worried about the situation at hand.

"I'M THINKING!" Brick rudely shouted back, his brows knitted into a nervous face.

"This ain't good…" Butch muttered. Unfortunately, the green ruff's phrase had the effect to jinx it: something had approached them quietly and they did not catch what it was until it detonated right behind them, releasing a light blue explosion.

The Rowdyruff Boys were all thrown away by the shockwave and sent flying randomly again. They fell deep into the conifer forest under the branch cover, too stunned to rebel against gravity.

When Brick finally regained control of his body, he found himself submerged by the undergrowth of the woods. He freed himself from the sea of bushes and leaves and controlled around, only to find his brothers in a similar situation. Whatever that thing was, it _hurt._

"Butch, when we're finished with this, you're soo going to get it…" Brick growled.

Butch did not have the chance to retort with an insult like he wanted.

"That's it! You have nowhere to hide! Surrender NOW!"

The ruffs raised their heads only to find the obvious. The four heroes were hovering twenty meters or so above them. Their circular formation blocked every possible plan of escape.

They had got them.

But surrendering to the puffs? Surrendering to the dimwit boy? Surrendering to _Blossom?_ Heck no!

"We're not surrendering to anyone, Blossom. You did not catch us before and you won't catch us today, even with the help of your sissy friend there!"

"We shall see, Brick," Blossom replied before making a move with her right arm. The Powerpuffs begain their descend towards them, while Donnie remained motionless above them. With the idiot up there, the ruffs would surely be intercepted if they tried to make a retreat.

 _Dang,_ Brick couldn't help but think. He clenched his fists, or at least did something similar with his fingerless hands, and gritted his teeth.

"Guys, you sure it's not a good idea to surrender?" Boomer said.

"Getting yourself captured and closed in jail is no fun, Boomer," Butch explained, rolling his eyes, but still keeping the puffs under his sight, "and besides, we would have to go under a trial, which is boring. So just wait and try not to get yourself knocked out for more than three seconds."

Boomer stuck out his tongue at his brother, who was too much focused on the puffs to care. Brick wasn't even listening to their bickering.

_There must be a way to defeat the puffs. There must be! We… we could-…_

Brick's line of thought was suddenly stopped when something bright happened in front of him. Immediately he did not seeing anything different from pure white.

"ARGH!" Boomer screamed in surprise.

"The heck is this?! I can't see anything!" Butch cursed out loud.

Brick would have said something even more vulgar, but he stopped himself when he heard voices above him.

"Blossom, Buttercup! I can't see anything!"

"Fall back!"

"Darn it!"

Whatever type of flashbang detonation had blinded the ruffs, it had had the same effects on the puffs, so there was still hope to get out of there. Now, if only he could recover his vision before the girls did…

When the white colour finally began to fade, Brick was met by a wall of grey particles. Apparently the responsible of the dazzling explosion had decided to thrown in some smoke bombs just in case.

Brick frowned. He couldn't see anything through the smoke screen, not even using his supervision. Whatever type of fume it was, it was made to be extremely thick and hard to see through. There was only one way to find his brothers.

He sighed before calling up, "Boomer! Butch!"

"We're here, Brick! We're arriving!" Butch's voice answered. In no time the two remaining ruffs met him.

"Any idea what's going on?" the green ruff inquired.

"No, but I'm not going to question it until it helps us. C'mon, let's get out of-"

"ROWDYRUFF BOYS!"

The voice, while electronic and disturbed by interferences, was impossible not to be recognized.

"Mojo?" Brick didn't see this coming even in the worst of his expectations.

"Yes, it is I, Mojo Jojo, who is currently not there, as you can see," Mojo Jojo's voice informed as the silhouette of a flying drone appeared in front of the Rowdyruffs, "and I'm here to get all of you out of this particularly delicate situation!"

"Umph, like we need your help, Mojo. We're not following you, period!" Brick snarled, Butch and Boomer nodding in unison. They all just wanted to go home, even if their current home was the nth house they had shooed the owner from.

"Mmmh, so you just want to go on yourselves, while the Powerpuff Girls and the boy known as Donnie are in the surroundings, outnumbering you?" the drone emitted, the eye of the camera staring at them.

Brick put an hand on his forefront. He hated it when Mojo was right.

"Alright, alright. Lead the way, but no funny things!" Brick struggled to say. He would have sworn that he saw the monkey grinning behind the camera's lent.

"Good to see your neurons are still functional. You'll soon come to know what a superior being as me is doing in Europe, while I…"

"Yeah yeah, Mojo, whatever…" Butch cut down the sentence. The camera rotated to face the green ruff, something that could be interpreted as annoyance, but the drone remained silent. Therefore, the ruffs and the drone soon left the area, oblivious to what was going on inside the mist.

* * *

…"Fall back!" Blossom shouted as he instinctively brought an hand in front of her in an attempt to protect herself, the other too busy in covering her blinded eyes.

"Darn it! Darn it!" Buttercup roared, not happy to see her sight stolen from her. Bubbles was in a similar situation, as she was trying to reach forward in order to prevent herself from colliding with the tree branches around them. None of them was able to see where the others ones were.

"Girls! Donnie! Get down, towards the ground! We can't afford being separated!" Blossom shouted as she began descending without exactly knowing where she was going, while praying that her sisters and her friend had followed her suggestion.

Soon, her mary janes touched the sparse grass of the undergrowth, and she was surprised to see the vision already returning to her eyes. To her dismay, however, she found that whatever, or whoever, had caused the flash explosion had decided to throw in a smoke screen as well. Not even her supervision could work, the dust was too thick.

"Bubbles! Butter-!" Blossom began calling, but she was cut off.

"Hang on, leader girl!" Buttercup's voice boomed, and a second later the shadow of the green puff appeared through the fog.

"Where's Bubbles? And Donnie?" Blossom instinctively said when she saw that the brunette was alone.

"I hoped you would tell me, Red. No idea…" Buttercup replied, her gaze never leaving her surroundings. She was obviously expecting an attack any moment, and Blossom had to admit she had every right to do it. No one could tell what, or who, could have caused this _change in the situation,_ and why it did.

"Okay, let's move and find them then," she ordered. Buttercup nodded, and together the two girls began moving, floating a feet away from the ground in complete silence, one watching the other's back. Soon the two puffs realized that the smoke, while abnormally thick, was failing to remain dense over time. It was a windy day, and soon the breezes began to slowly clear the air, thus increasing the girls' field of view.

"Bubbles! Donnie!" Blossom continued to call up, as remains of the smoke screen were still preventing her from giving a full check of the surroundings. No one answered back, and for what were two minutes but the girls felt like hours nothing happened.

That was, until they heard a noise. The sound of metal colliding with a human skull.

Blossom and Buttercup didn't even have to tell each other what they were going to do. The two girls went off like a shot towards the source of the sound. Whatever had caused it didn't have realistically the time to get out of the way before the arrival of the puffs.

When an human form began to be almost visible in front of them, however, the two girls took different routes of action. Blossom stopped, and she would have told her sister to do the same if she had the time.

Buttercup was however of another idea: she wasn't letting the surprise factor fade away so easily, and her speed did not lower of any unit. Thus, she disappeared into the fog and with a war cry charged at the figure.

Blossom cringed when she heard again the same, exact sound from before, only louder and definitely nearer. She braced herself and resisted the urge to come to the help of her sister, even with the sound of a tree log cracking under an impact. That was mainly due to the fact that the stranger had decided to move right towards her, finally revealing himself.

Blossom glared at the man who was now standing in front of her. The male adult looked much older than Professor Utonium. Wrinkles all over his face and a cover of grey hair left no doubts about his age… apparently. The girl would have given him no less than sixty years old. He wore an extremely simple lab coat which was shorter than the one used by her creator, fact that revealed a pair of black working trousers. He was wearing a pair of glasses as well, an extremely old model without temples.

He did not look dangerous for the Powerpuff Girl, not at all. But there were other characteristics that she had failed to notice with her initial analysis, things that put her on guard about him despite its weak appearance.

It was not possible to see his human-flesh hands and feet. In place of the first two, he had what appeared to be robotic-looking appendixes made out of steel which resembled in every way to a human hand. The feet had someway got a similar treatment as the man was wearing what looked like shining metal boots. There was no way to tell if those things were covering his hands and feet or if they were _in place_ of them.

Blossom tensed when she saw the man move one of his robotic hands. The appendix made a sound easily recognizable as the screeching of metal against metal, but other than that the movement and articulation of the hand were perfectly natural. He then simply fixed his glasses, no doubt in order to get a better look at the girl.

That was when she looked at him right into his eyes. She didn't found hatred, or hostility… nothing of the emotions she was used to feel when she looked at her enemies. His gaze was completely and utterly neutral, like she didn't even exist in the world.

"Hello," the man began, astonishing the redhead even more with apparent good manners and a tone compatible with his expression. His voice was rough, as the one of someone who had seen too much in his life: "I'm sorry for what I've just done. Still, know that when you follow your path, there are obstacles that have to be surpassed, whatever the cost is. Your sisters _were_ an obstacle in my _path_ , and I sincerely hope you won't be as foolish as they were."

That said, the man turned his back to Blossom and began walking away, without further explanations.

"Hey!" the powerpuff leader called in annoyance, "What did you do to my sisters? Who are you? What do you want with-?"

She stopped in mid-sentence when she noticed that the right arm of the man was currently enveloped around something. She immediately recognized the colour of the hair.

"Donnie! Leave him alone!" Blossom shouted with a commanding tone, but the walking man did not slow down. She was left with no choice: she had to go and stop him… she couldn't just let him get away with Donnie!

Blossom flied up a little bit before charging at the scientist-looking human. She prepared herself for everything the man could have prepared for her.

But she was not prepared for what he ultimately did.

The man did not turn to face Blossom until the very last moment. The speed with which he rotated his body was _inhuman,_ something Blossom believed to be exclusive to puffs. Inhuman was also the speed of the fist that arrived to greet her forehead. There was no time to react, and the metal collided with her cranium at the max of its strength.

At first, Blossom had thought that her superpowers would have protected her from this attack, but she was wrong. The sheer force of the punch was completely out of parameter: she was sent flying back, alright, but her vision instantly became blurry and an extremely painful headache began to torment her head.

Thus, when she landed far away from where the man was located, Blossom did not immediately get up to fight. She was dazzled, astonished and stunned at the same time. She wasn't even sure if she had passed out or not.

Soon, the headache began to lessen its grip, and Blossom could make out something in front of her. Unfortunately, it was the face of the man himself.

She instinctively moved back only to find herself pinned. A metallic boot blocked her feet and therefore every possibility of movement. Too stunned to put up some type of resistance, she remained motionless lying on the ground. Trapped.

"Humph," the man hummed before smiling. Not an evil smile, mind you. It was an amused smile, like he found all of this kind of funny.

"You may have your chance to fight, Blossom Utonium, as people like to call you," the scientist continued, "but that may not happen now. It is not expected to happen in my plans, and when something isn't in my plans, it _won't happen, period."_

The man stood up, as he was bending over her. He still had Donnie, who was definitely knocked out, firm under his arm; "Do not get yourself in my way again. If I'll ever need your presence, I'll tell you. If you fail to listen to my words… trust me, _you'll regret it._ "

That said, the main suddenly attacked and another metal fist landed a hit, this time directly on Blossom's face. If the first one had caused her to be out of commission for half a minute, this second strike had the effect to make her black out on contact.

* * *

_Blossom?_

_Blossom!_

"Blossom! Wake up! C'mon, leader girl!"

Slowly, Blossom made her return to the world of the living. She opened her eyes only to close them back due to the excessive brightness of the light. "…Buttercup?" she whispered, "are you all right?".

"Yeah, it's me, and Bubbles is with me," the brunette informed, "we have a stinking headache, but apart from that we're okay."

"What about you, Blossom?" Bubbles said worriedly, "can you stand up?"

Blossom tried to at least sit up, and she was pleased to discover that her muscles were working and her skeleton was still in one piece. She stood up before eventually recovering her sight.

Her sisters had both an hand over their foreheads, but other than that, they seemed okay.

"I'm fine… I think…" Blossom said. She wasn't convinced about it herself, given the fact that she felt like one hundres of vans frantically going around in her head, but she resisted the urge to soothe her head. There was a metallic taste in her mouth as well.

"You know we have a whole lot of questions to ask, do you?" Buttercup stated matter-of-factly.

"I've thought so. What about the Rowdyruffs?" the redhead began.

"Disappeared," Bubbles answered, "no clue on where they've gone."

"I bet the crybabies have left just when the flash thing blinded us. Losers…" Buttercup muttered.

"Speaking of 'flash thing', what happened to you two?" Blossom asked.

"Bubbles does not remember anything but seeing pure white. She must have been knocked out before she could even see something through the smoke. As for me, well, you should have seen it yourself. Do you remember?"

"…I do." Blossom said, frowning as she struggled to recover her momentarily distorted memories," ...I remember him, too…"

"Who? The one who attacked us?"

"Yes, Buttercup. Some type of scientist, I think… he was extremely strong and fast, I don't know how he was able to do that… he said to not mess with his plans, or something like that."

"Well, for me, he has just secured a visit by myself. I've a score to settle with the man now.."

"Wait, Buttercup. I'm missing something important.. but I do not remember…"

Suddenly, Blossom gasped. In her mind, a detailed image of the scientist appeared. However, it was not his face nor its appearance to startle Blossom. It was the form of the young boy that was kept under his arm.

"Donnie!"

"What?" Bubbles and Buttercup said at the same time, puzzled.

"He's kidnapped Donnie! I remember now!"

"Oh, no!" Bubbles cried. Buttercup, too shocked at first to open her mouth, finally replied, "Darn… that's a good reason to get moving now!"

"For once I agree Buttercup. I don't know if he has anything to do with the boys, but this man has definitely caused the rest of this: he distracted us in order to take us out and capture Donnie with ease. We have to get to know who the guy is and what he wants with us and Donnie!"

"Well, apart from the fact that his punches are _hard,_ there's not much we know about him…" Buttercup commented.

"I don't know… if he's anything like what Blossom said, he cannot have passed by unnoticed in Ultrapolis. Just like everyone knows Mojo at Townsville…" Bubbles supposed.

Blossom thought about it for some seconds before replying, "But Mojo attacks Townsville basically every week, and we don't know if this man does the same towards Ultrapolis… Donnie has never told us anything about him. Let's go first to visit Katja and tell her what happened: she deserves it after all. Then, we will try to see if there's anyone in this city who knows about him. Move it!"

With the next actions decided, the Powerpuff Girls flied away and dashed towards Ultrapolis at full speed. They couldn't fathom what had happened to Donnie, and for all they knew every second wasted could have been crucial.

* * *

Donnie suddenly woke up, floating in the air. The last thing he remembered was being blinded by an absurdly bright light, but after that everything was black. Somehow, the memory seemed to be compatible at first with was he seeing at the moment, as something very bright was currently preventing him to watch correctly around.

Soon, his superpowered eyes began to settle to the new environment. When Donnie finally managed to keep at least semi-opened them, a voice greeted him.

"Well, well, well, if this isn't a déjà vu!"

Donnie felt the air being sucked away from its lungs. This voice… he remembered it. But… impossible!

He forced himself to get an image of what was in front of him, and he didn't like what he found.

He was closed into a cage made out of bright energy bars… _again._ And again, Mojo Jojo, the archenemy of his friends, was smiling at him from the other side.

"Don't worry, my friend. This time, things are going to work out differently for both us. That is to say that this time, I, Mojo Jojo, will prevail over the pathetic brats you call friends. Nothing will stop me from getting rid of the Powerpuff Girls once and for all!"

"No!" Donnie shouted in anger: he had stopped being a crybaby long time ago. He had changed, and he wouldn't have let the monkey put him in despair again. "I'm not going to let you do that! I'll stop you!"

"To be fair, Mojo Jojo doesn't want to have anything to do with you, Donnie…" a voice interjected, surprising both the villain and the hero.

The chimpanzee hastily turned and launched an annoyed glare at the source of the disturbance. Seconds after, the figure of a man appeared at his side. It was the same one who had attacked the girls.

"He's only interested in the destruction of the Powerpuff Girls, as I've promised him that what I'm going to do with you will most probably have the same effect on your person," the man continued with a neutral, almost teaching tone.

Donnie didn't let his guard down. He wasn't going to let some simple words frighten him: "Who are you? What do you want from me?"

"That's something you're going to know soon, but not now. For now, you'll be satisfied to know that I was the one who captured you and brought you here. My colleague here helped me with the building of this cage who, as he told me, appears to be extremely effective on keeping your kind under custody."

Donnie glared at the scientist. He was already feeling bad emotions towards the guy, even if he didn't know who he was. There was something off about him… but, in any case, if he was willing to team up with Mojo Jojo, he couldn't be any good.

"You know what? I don't care what the heck you're going to do, with or without the monkey. I'm still going to stop you both at any cost!" Donnie retorted, ignoring Mojo as he protested about being addressed as a mere monkey.

The man stared at him, ignoring himself the shouts of his angry companion. Then, he smiled.

"You should care, if I were you. Nevertheless, you are right, you should know of a way to call your jailor."

He kneeled down and stared at Donnie right into his eyes. And no matter how hard he tried to not do it and despite the scientist's glasses, the boy made unconsciously a step back. An idea had just appeared in his mind, an idea that had the effect to surprise and scare him at the same time.

The scientist's next words unfortunately confirmed his thoughts.

"You shall refer to me as… _Doctor Porter."_


	4. Following the Trail

The Mayor of Ultrapolis watched the three little girls who were at the moment waiting for an answer. He had been surprised at first to see them appear in his office, but when they had filled him about the current situation, the emotion had been taken and put away for another time.

"I think I know who this 'scientist' is, Powerpuff Girls," he said gravely. He stood up from his chair and circled the desk, as he wanted to get a good view on the girls' faces for what he was going to say.

He sighed before asking, "By any means, has Donnie ever told you about the name of Porter?"

The girls watched each other for a second before shaking their heads.

"Do you perhaps know about what was Donnie's creator, Laurentium, first job in this city?"

"He told us once that Professor Laurentium had worked at a lab facility before leaving to build his own laboratory," the red haired girl said.

"Good. Laurentium has worked at Ultrapolis' General Laboratory for various months, if I remember correctly. There were other scientists who worked there as well, of course, and one of them was Doctor Porter."

He walked around the office as he continued to speak, "Porter was a scientist who was ready to do everything needed to accomplish his goals. He was not frightened by danger and had tried various times to get results in hazardous ways. That had brought him and Laurentium to fight various times, until eventually Porter someway gained the approval of the majority of the employees and scientists, and Laurentium decided to leave the General Lab."

He stopped to face the girls, "Without him, Porter had the full lab at his disposal. We don't know what he exactly did during those months inside the facility, as the lab's logs have been destroyed. But one day, an explosion nearly made the entire facility collapse. Various men and women died in that incident, others were luckier… but Porter's corpse had never been found. We labelled him as the only one missing after a month of research."

He resumed to walk and approached his desk again, "That incident brought me to commission some research about Porter, but we didn't learn much more than what I told you. This event happened five months before the birth of Donnie."

"I'm sorry, but how can all of this be helpful to us? I mean, there's no way to tell if the guy we're looking for is this Porter you're talking about," the brunette girl asked.

The other one, Blossom, elbowed her sister, but the Mayor didn't mind. She was right in a way.

"Porter was a scientist specialized in biology researches. That united with his fierce personality brought to… abnormal results. Know that after the incident, the fire-fighter squads which were sent into the parts of the facility that had managed to not crumble… found things that are not easy to be described. That is the motif that brought the Committee and me to level the area and sterilize it."

He sat down on his chair, "He was thirty years old when the event at the General Lab happened. I know that it doesn't make sense, but if there is anyone in the world who's capable to survive and disappear from that catastrophe, that would be him. I have no idea why would he look like he had doubled his age or how he has powers comparable to yours, but he's the most likely to have gained them."

"I'm sorry, would you excuse me for a minute, sir?" Blossom asked. "Go on, but be quick."

The girls began to whisper to each other, evidently discussing their options. In other circumstances, he would have found them adorable, but now was not the time for such thoughts.

They finally stopped talking to each other and turned to the Mayor, "Okay, we think that there is a good probability that Porter is our man. Do you have any idea of where he would be located now?"

"Unfortunately no, Blossom," the Mayor answered, "Until five minutes ago I, and everyone in Ultrapolis, thought that Porter was dead and gone for good."

"Then, how can we find him? There must be some clues we can look for to find out where he's hiding Donnie…" the redhead thought out loud. The other two sisters similarly tensed up in thought.

The Mayor, however, had an idea to suggest. It may not have been the best one, but it was something. "I believe that if there was anyone in this city who knew about Porter's real situation, that would be Professor Laurentium."

"Huh?" the three girls uttered at the same time.

"Laurentium had always been wary about Porter, and there is proof that he had been trying to control what the Doctor had been doing at the lab after his departure. He might have failed to prevent the incident, but there is no way to tell if he had continued to look for information about Porter after we gave up looking for him."

"So… you suggest to go to Laurentium's lab and look for something useful there?" Blossom continued.

"Exactly," the Mayor simply confirmed.

"It's our only trail… we may as well follow that," Bubbles said.

"Agreed. Thanks for your help, Mayor, but we need to go!" Blossom thanked as the three of them stood up from their seats.

"I understand, but let me warn you before going away. I'm going to do my calls and send some security force squads at Laurentium's lab as well. If you happen to find out where Porter is located before they arrive, try to leave the info available for them."

The girls gave a glance to each other, and Buttercup said, "Uh, no offense, Mayor, but we can do it ourselves…"

"What Buttercup means is that we don't want to get anyone injured or worse. Just let us do it!" Bubbles said, watching the Mayor with her most pleading eyes.

The Mayor however proved to be immune to her 'attack': "That's only a safe option in case you need help. If Porter is still alive, I want him to be secured as soon as possible. There are a lot of questions that he needs to answer, and if he's anything like you described, then he may as well be defined as a public enemy."

He cleared his throat before finishing his speech, "In addition… keep your guard ready. He could have anything, _anything,_ in store for you three."

"Okay… we'll try and be extra careful about this Mayor," Blossom said. Then, the three of them pronounced a fast 'bye' before flying through the office away in a hurry, passing through a window the Mayor had opened minutes before in forethought.

He watched the three streaks getting away into the city and sighed again, trying to write up a mental plan of what he needed to do.

"Time to get working…" he grumbled as he began dialling up a number on his landline phone.

* * *

"What is their current activity, colleague?"

Mojo Jojo frowned and did not turn to face his business partner, instead continuing to stare at the screens in front of him. The drone was at the moment flying fast, trying to keep up the pace of the girls it was following without letting them notice it.

"They are definitely looking for us, though I do not understand where they're heading for now," the chimpanzee muttered, scratching his chin in thought.

Porter watched the screen for some seconds before saying, "I know that path. They're heading for Laurentium's laboratory. A smart move, I'd say… They might even be able to find us."

"WHAT?!" Mojo Jojo was astonished.

"I have no idea what Laurentium had been doing in his personal lab while he was alive, he was smart enough to cover his works well, but if I knew something about him it'd be that he was a careful and apprehensive person. Too much for my liking… which is why the female infra-humans might be able to find the location of my tunnel system there."

"Curses… Those accursed Powerpuffs must be stopped, and I hope you won't just let them get there without doing anything!" Mojo Jojo snorted, glaring at the man with his most annoyed face.

"Of course not. They may be formidable adversaries, but that won't mean I'll just let them play detective without adding up some amusing obstacles... The time we'll earn from this action should be enough for us to begin our work."

"Finally! Pray that whatever you've been planning will be worth the wait that I, Mojo Jojo, had to bear!"

"Believe me, Mojo Jojo, when I say that what we're going to do will not only be useful for you… it's going to be _beautiful."_

Mojo Jojo was not convinced, "Hmph, we shall see, Porter."

"Huh? What are you going to do? What the heck are you two planning?"

Mojo and the Doctor both turned to face the young boy who had dared to interrupt their discussion. He had been thoughtful and silent until that moment, but it seemed like he had recovered some of his guts.

Mojo Jojo crossed his hands and narrowed his eyes. No doubt he was thinking about the various tortures he could apply to his body… Porter, however, did not seem to be too much bothered. He approached the boy and raised a metallic hand.

"You will know as well what is going to happen today, infra-human."

Donnie heard a _*click*_ noise coming from Porter's hand, and a hidden hatch opened. Before Donnie could react, Porter picked up what seemed to be a tiny tube and aimed it at the little boy, triggering the mechanism hidden inside it.

A sharp sting sensation pervaded Donnie's body and he reached out to find a needle stuck into his arm. Its contents were already empty: whatever material it was made of, it had been able to penetrate its skin and shirt alike.

In a few seconds, the boy began to feel dizzy and sleepy, and in half a minute he collapsed to the ground, asleep and vulnerable.

"Seems like the treatment of the sedative with Unidentified Y had not been a total waste of time. Intriguing, but I'll leave the thought for another time," Porter said as he put the tube back into its place.

He therefore turned to Mojo, who wasn't impressed and limited himself to raise an eyebrow. "I'll carry _it_ with us. We need to move to the chamber where the experiment and the test will both take place. Then, I'll leave you and the infra-human for a moment while I go to send my personal present for the so called Powerpuff Girls…"

* * *

Locating Laurentium's house proved to be extremely difficult at first for the girls. By Donnie's words, they already knew of the area where the house was located, but it became apparent that the scientist had not chosen a uncommon design like Professor Utonium did.

The girls had been circling around a district of the north outskirts of Ultrapolis for some minutes already, but there was no way to tell the houses from one another. Apparently they were all of the same type.

"Ugh, we're losing time! So much for the idea to not stop and ask where the lab is, Blossom!" Buttercup said, frowning, as they flew in search of something hitting the eye.

"I didn't think that Donnie's creator lived in an house so… normal! We didn't have the time!" the leader responded.

"Then I hope you're happy now that we'll end up lose even more time, Einstein!" Buttercup retorted.

Blossom turned and fired her most angry glare at her sister, but the green-eyed girl did not even flinch. Thank heavens, Bubbles came in to stop their argue before it could escalate.

"Girls! Look!"

Blossom and Buttercup sceptically watched the place that their sister was referring to. "Bubbles, that's just another random house, what the-" Buttercup groaned, but she was stopped by Blossom's hand which abruptly closed her mouth.

"Buttercup, look carefully."

Blossom was surprised to see her hand shoved away into her own face by her sister. Buttercup didn't seem to have liked the sudden stop of her speech, but she nevertheless turned to give a better look at the small house.

The house was at first sight another random building, alright, but a more accurate inspection would have revealed some key details. The garden had been left to the nature's control for a long time; most of the windows were closed, and those which weren't had been closed from the outside by wooden planks. The house itself, in other words, had all the features of an abandoned mansion.

The girls found themselves floating towards the house unknowingly, and they soon reached the front. There was a huge note on the fence that gave a good explanation about the current state of the area.

_THIS HOUSE HAS BEEN CLOSED AND PUT UNDER PUBLIC CONTROL. ALL ACCESS IS FORBIDDEN TO NON-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL._

The cartel had been put directly on the front gate to the house, that was directly linked to the house's garage. On the smaller gate at its side the only written words were the name of the deceased owner of the building on a tiny, old label.

_Laurentium Bronislav._

The girls exchanged a quick glance, and Blossom ultimately took the lead and timidly pushed the small gate open. They walked over the walkway and glanced at the house as they approached the front door. It had been left uninhabited for only some months, but it had been enough to give a place an eerie feel.

"Blossom, I don't like this place…" Bubbles whispered.

"Dummy, it's just an abandoned house…" Buttercup muttered, rolling her eyes.

"Let's just get inside and find what we need. Remember, Donnie counts on us, all right?"

Bubbles and Buttercup nodded and Blossom resumed her path. Moments after they were stopped by the front door, which judging from the additional _metal_ bars had been closed for good.

"The mayor did not give us any key, did he?" Buttercup asked as she examined the door.

"No… we might need to find some other way to enter…" Blossom thought out-loud. But unbeknownst to her, her sister flied towards the door, grabbed a bar, and pulled the thing away. The door might have been enforced, but Buttercup was a Powerpuff Girl, and five seconds after the brunette found out that she was keeping the entire door, the bars, and parts of the near frame in her hand.

"Buttercup!" Blossom shouted with a scolding tone.

"Hey, I bought us some time! C'mon, let's get in…" Buttercup said before flying into the first room without waiting for Blossom's answer. The redhead sighed in defeat and followed her in, Bubbles right behind her.

Laurentium's house had indeed been left to its own for some time. Everything was covered by a thin, but in any case present, cover of dust, and as Buttercup found out at her attempt to switch them on, the lights were not working. The light entering from the destroyed entrance was for the moment enough for them, thanks to their powered sight.

The front door was directly linked to a living room not too much different to the one they had at their own house at Townsville, but that and the kitchen apparently were the only rooms of the ground floor.

The girls spread out and began looking for something that could look like the entrance to a laboratory. Blossom moved towards the kitchen, but she soon found out that apart from a turned off fridge, a table and some shelves there wasn't anything remotely interesting.

Buttercup floated upwards and began inspecting the first floor. She found a bedroom and a bathroom, and a series of three, completely empty rooms. Well, that was true for the first two.

"Nothing… Darn, where is that lab?" Buttercup grunted while she entered the third room. When she realized what was inside, she stopped in mid-track. This room was not completed, just like the other two, but it wasn't empty. It lacked of the floor and coloured walls, but there was a single bed and some additional furniture still packed into plastic. Another plastic bag contained what seemed to be toys.

Buttercup swallowed but kept her coolness. She knew what this room had been for, but that was it, no reason to ponder over it. It wasn't the laboratory.

She turned and floated away, trying to act like she had not seen anything. "Girls! Anything?" she called, _aloud._

"Buttercup, quiet!" Bubbles said in a nervous tone.

"No, no, Buttercup, not yet. I give you've not been lucky as well, have you?"

The brunette nodded as she glided downstairs. The three of them were all in the living room now.

"So, now what do we do?"

"We still need to inspect the garage, and for all we know the entrance may be hidden outside. Let's go," Blossom instructed. She turned towards Bubbles, who seemed to be lost into watching something on a wall.

"Bubbles, come on. We need to keep looking."

But the girl did not move, thus forcing Blossom to move towards her and put an hand on her shoulder. She glanced up, wondering what could have taken his sister's attention.

It was a framed photo, where Professor Laurentium was portrayed. He wasn't alone, however, as the girls were able to recognize Donnie's aunt, Katja, along with a man and two kids who were no doubt her husband and sons. There were also other people in the photo, most notably some scientists who decided to keep the lab coat for the moment. They were all smiling.

Blossom found herself lost into the photo just like Bubbles was. She had had just one chance to see Laurentium with her eyes, but the memory was clear in her mind. It was him.

"Hey, what are you two doing? It's not the time to daydream!" Buttercup's sudden voice boomed, nearly startling the two of them. Bubbles turned with an annoyed look, but Blossom just answered, "Sorry, I've lost focus. Let's move."

That said, the girls began moving, and they would have exited if it wasn't for Bubbles who suddenly tugged at their sisters' dresses.

"What now, Bubbles?" Buttercup requested, crossing her hands. "I… think there's something more than that portrait."

She went back exactly where the photo was located. She admired the frame for some other seconds.

"Bubbles, whatever you have in mind, just do it. We can't afford to play around," Blossom advised.

Bubbles nodded without turning and hovered upwards. She approached the photo and observed the object for some additional seconds. Then, she abruptly took the picture away.

"Bubbles?"

She put the frame over a near shelf and moved away to show her sisters what she had found: the wall part hidden by the photo was as lucent as metal, and there was a key lock in it.

"I knew there was something behind it... just like in the movies," Bubbles said, giggling.

Buttercup and Blossom watched each other before going in front of the suspicious wall piece. The latter inquisitively tapped the wall, which caused the hidden door to move. The girls moved back as the heavy, metallic door continued to move thanks to gravity with a loud creaking.

Before them there was a series of stairs, after which, the darkness reigned. But there was no doubt. This was Laurentium's laboratory. They had no idea why it was hidden that way, but it wasn't important for the moment.

Blossom dared to make the first step. The stairs didn't react with an atmospheric creak, so the girls began a quiet descent into the chamber. They expected these to finish soon, but they soon realized their thought was wrong.

The stairs finished only after one minute of walking. "Man, this lab is sure bigger than the Professor's!" Buttercup exclaimed, which resulted with her voice saying 'Professor' three times in a row. When the echo stopped, she raised an eyebrow before adding, in a quieter tone, "Yep, it is."

"Anything we can use to light this place up?" Blossom said. Her answer was a light turned on directly into her eyes.

"Hey, watch it out, Bubbles!"

"Sorry… these must have been left by the last visitors," Bubbles apologized while she showed her sister the flashlights she had found. With the added light they were able to take a good look at their surroundings.

Buttercup was right: Laurentium's laboratory was way bigger than the Professor's one. It seemed like the scientist had preferred to work on getting more space in order to not get limited by it. Most of the lab was indeed full of objects: shelves full of books, scientific contraptions and instruments of all types, various working stations and tables, and so on, but there were areas void of anything as well.

"Wow… Donnie's creator didn't spare any expenses…" Buttercup said in awe.

"How are we supposed to find something about Doctor Porter here?" Bubbles asked as she pointed the flashlight around.

"I don't know, but we can't just stop now. Let's split up… there must be something that could bring us to Porter somewhere in this place."

The girls therefore moved in three different directions, in search of any clue useful to learn the current location of the Doctor.

* * *

Buttercup was the first one to lose her patience while she looked around.

"Ugh… this is going to drive me crazy…" she grumbled as she lost interest even on the objects she was enlightening with her flashlight. "It's going to be months before we find anything at this rate…"

She stopped walking and huffed, in an attempt to focus on her task. She therefore randomly pointed the electric torch around, just to keep her occupied.

Buttercup gasped when she realized what was standing in front of her.

"Whoa…"

There were various lines of tall metallic shelves, full with dust and all types of glassware and scientific equipment. While this alone would have been a boring finding for the brunette, what impressed her was what the first line of shelves contained.

Various beakers and tanks, all containing a dense, dark orange liquid. And every glass object had a 'Y' paper plastered on it.

There were at most thirty of those things visible, but Buttercup noticed that around there were boxes identified with the same 'Y' symbol, which left few doubts about their contents.

 _Unidentified Y…_ Buttercup thought as she floated up and reached to touch one of the beakers. _Blossom will kill me if he sees this…_

In the end, the curiosity won her, and the little girl picked up one of the beakers. She left the liquid inside move up and down as she rotated the glass and watched the substance inquisitively. To her, it had no interesting features whatsoever… but Chemical X did as well, apart from the black colour.

_How is this even possible? Why isn't Chemical X unique, like the Professor told us? …what can this Unidentified Y actually do?_

"Buttercup!" Blossom voiced called from another area of the laboratory.

"Ahem! I… uhmm… Haven't found anything yet, but I'm still looking!" Buttercup quickly said as she hastily put the beaker back into its place. The move was a bit less careful than needed and the girl had to put both hands on the shelf to stop it from falling down.

"…riiight… Just continue exploring. This place is big but it's not gigantic, we should find something anytime now!"

"Sure thing, sure thing!" Buttercup responded before hitting the ground, snatching the flashlight and resuming her search with renewed vigour.

* * *

Blossom resumed her pace with a not happy look on her face. Heavens only knew what Buttercup was doing, and she hoped to find something before her sister did anything uncalled for.

The redhead had been wandering around the lab for ten minutes now, and while she liked to think that she was the most focused one of the Powerpuff Girls, she had begun to feel nervous as well. Time was a crucial factor, as there was no way to tell what Porter was doing to Donnie, if he was the culprit for his kidnapping of course.

But for now she had found nothing more than various mechanical equipment and instruments not too much different from Professor Utonium's ones. She would have tried to think of a way to speed things up if it wasn't for the fact that something appeared in front of her as soon as the light reached it.

It was a machine far bigger than the ones she had encountered until now. From the outside it wasn't much different from a cube of metal, but at men's height she found a control keyboard and a sign that read out, _Emergency Condensator._

 _Condensator?,_ Blossom thought, _I believe I've read something about that word. It has to do with electricity, so… uhmmm…_

She hovered up and put herself in front of the commands of the machine, before realizing that there were further notes on the side of the case. On one of these it was written: _Temporary Generator – To use in case of power outages or usage of energy-expending machines._

 _Well, it might not be what I was looking for, but it'll sure help us if I manage to get it to light this place up,_ Blossom thought. She looked around and found one of the buttons quite inviting, with the big 'START' which was written on it and all. _Okay, here goes nothing,_ she said before pressing the key.

The machine instantly began roaring as it came back from its prolonged state of inactivity, event that startled Blossom and made her fly back to safety.

"What's going on?" Buttercup's voice said, followed right after by Bubbles', "Hey, what's all the noise about?"

The machine continue to hum until it reached a stable state, after which the lights in the lab were suddenly turned on.

Blossom smiled at her accomplishment. "I found what seemed to be a power generator, and I activated it! This should gain us some time!"

"WHAT! You just turned up what _seemed_ to be a power generator? What if it wasn't? Geez, and I should be the reckless one here…"

"Huh? What do you mean? What did you do?" Blossom replied, suspicious about her sister's last words.

"Uhh… Nothing!"

"Girls!" Bubbles voice interjected, preventing Blossom from investigating further, "It's not what we're looking for, but I just found something you have to see!"

"What Bubbles?" Blossom asked. She didn't want to lose more time than needed.

"…it's hard to describe. Can you come here yourselves?"

The redhead sighed before saying, "Fine, I'm coming. Buttercup, keep looking while I see what Bubbles want."

A grunt of response came to Blossom ears, along with other words she decided to ignore. She hovered over the height of the various shelves before heading for Bubbles' location. The voyage didn't took her long: the new illumination was indeed proving to be an helpful addition.

* * *

When she reached her sister, she found her standing on the ground motionless.

"So, what's so important then?" Blossom said as she landed at her side. Bubbles limited herself to raise her arm and point forward before saying, "Look."

Blossom at first didn't see anything remotely interesting to. A working table, some wooden shelves, an abandoned pot, some other machines…

Then, a memory came back into its mind when she noticed one of the machines was quite strange in its design. It somewhat resembled a sea urchin with all those spikes… And she already had heard about it.

… _but still, I'm right here writing while on of the spikes comes out of my stomach. I doubt I will be alive when assistance arrives…_

At the bottom of the machine, there was a reddish stain, dark and dry, but still recognizable by the girls. It had not been cleaned at the time of the event. At once, everything in the area got its meaning: the table, the pot…

"…this is where Donnie has been created, isn't it?" Blossom whispered.

Bubbles nodded, as she was at loss of words. She was staring in particular at the stain on the floor.

"…listen, I know it's not pretty, but that has happened in the past. Remember Professor Laurentium and how he looked like when we saw him. How Donnie is happy now. Let's just continue our research, Bubbles."

That said, Blossom turned around, but before she could fly back to her previous location, Bubbles stopped her by putting an hand on her shoulder.

"Blossom, wait. Look at _that."_

The redhead saw a shelf full of documents, a type of container she had yet to find in the laboratory. The papers had seen better days, but the contents were still readable.

"It's the first one you saw as well?" Blossom asked, to which Bubbles replied with an affirmative 'Yep'.

"There must be important info there if it's so rare. Come on, let's get to work," Blossom said, but before they could take a single step towards the papers, the ground rumbled.

"Now what? Buttercup!" Blossom called.

"It wasn't me!" Buttercup replied from the other side of the lab, "There is something right under this-"

Her speech were abruptly cut off as there was a loud noise of earth, metal and concrete being shredded, and a beastly call coming from an unknown animal right from where Buttercup's voice came.

Bubbles and Blossom right away zapped into flight and flew through the laboratory. Ten seconds was all they needed to join their sister.

 _Something_ was trying to get a hold of Buttercup, as the brunette tried to free herself from the grasp of the being. Blossom and Bubbles reacted on pure instinct and fired their eyebeams at the beast, which howled and lessened its grip on Buttercup's legs.

The brunette flied at a safe distance and met up with her sisters, "You're okay?" Bubbles asked.

"I'm good, that… _thing_ is fast, but not as fast as me," Buttercup answered. The three of them then directed their utter attention to the foe that had appeared to confront them.

It was like someone had dreamed of a fantastic animal made up of other animal parts, converted it into a nightmarish style, and put it in front of the Powerpuff Girls. The right side showed two limbs that looked like raven's paws, while the left side ones were covered with reptile-like scales. The same applied for the snake-like tail, but it didn't for the feline-like construction of the main body. The most grotesque feature however was the face of the creature, which was not identifiable as a part of an animal. It was like random pieces had been assembled in an even more random way, resulting in something that could only be described as an abomination. Eyes, holes that you couldn't be sure were noses or ears, everything was placed without a proper rule. The only thing that stood out as well made were the jaws and the menacing teeth that lined them. Its size was not big, but it was still much taller than a common human.

The mutant looked more like a zombie rather than a living being. Its body parts were not covered by proper skin for a good part of its body, and in some areas its internal organs, which were more of a mangled mess rather than normal viscera, were visible. There was however no blood or sign the creature suffered from all of this. There was no way something like that would have been capable to be alive… yet, it was, and at the moment it was mad, as it opened its jaws and emitted a screech that made the Powerpuff Girls cringe in fear.

"..calm down. We can beat it, let's try to keep him busy from all sides and-" Blossom stopped when the creature leaped towards them without notice, at a speed they were not expecting.

"SCATTER!" the leader shouted, and the girls dashed away in three different directions as the Chimaera slashed at them with its two different sets of claws, reptilian ones and talons.

The monster landed on a mixture of machines, crushing them with ease. Then, he looked around in search of its prey and registered the fact that the girls were now separated from each other. Before the Powerpuffs could regroup, the Chimaera leaped forward again towards Bubbles' location.

The blue puff prepared herself for the upcoming battle. The monster opened its mouth but when its teeth closed into each other it ate nothing but air, as Bubbles was already behind it and kicked it on its back, _hard._

The creature screeched and as soon as it touched the ground, it leaped on the opposite side almost instantly, taking aback Bubbles with its speed. This time, its slashing scored an hit.

" _Gaah!"_ Bubbles shrieked as she flied away from the monstrous being, which would have been already on hot pursuit if it wasn't for Buttercup and Blossom who respectively punched it and hit it with a pink energy blast, forcing the creature to retreat.

"Bubbles! You're okay?" the two of them said at the same time while they moved back, keeping their stare on the beast.

"…I'm good, I'm good… don't let it hit you, those claws are _sharp!"_ Bubbles reassured. Her right arm had some deep cuts in it, some drops of bloods leaving her body. Her healing powers were actually already kicking in, but those couldn't do anything about the pain.

"I'm making sure that _thing_ pays for that!" Buttercup shouted, just in time as the Chimaera took the initiative and jumped again with its jaws ready to take them in its clutches.

Blossom and Buttercup both fired their eyebeams before moving sidewards to evade the creature's mouth, which landed a shot on the creature's face. It screeched in pain, but nevertheless continued its path and slashed its claws at Bubbles, who this time was able to avoid the attack easily.

Buttercup and Blossom followed the beast, and when it landed it found himself in close quarters combat with the two puffs. They began to attack him with all they got, punches, kicks and such. It tried to react with its claws, but the girls were fast, concentrated and _small,_ and every attempt resulted in another punch in its guts. It roared furiously and suddenly changed tactic: it crushed both forelimbs into the floor, breaking the concrete like it was plastic, and raised its body in the air.

The girls retreated in an attempt to keep it under control, but that was exactly the opposite of what they should have done, as the creature bent its forelimbs and used them to take another powerful leap, basically flying backwards. It somewhat was able to locate the position of the two puffs in space as both limbs tackled the two girls. The reptile limb hit Buttercup as a powerful fist, sending her on another part of the lab, crushing machines and wood alike, but Blossom was not so lucky, as the bird limb closed itself around her body, effectively trapping the little girl.

"Blossom! Buttercup!" Bubbles shouted as she saw her two sisters in danger. Deciding that Buttercup could do without her for a moment, she pursued the beast with the purpose to help Blossom. But the Chimaera didn't waste any time.

As soon as it reached the ground, the monster exchanged its prey from the back limbs to the fore ones, and Blossom did not even have the time to realize what was going to happen as the monster literally shoved her into its jaws.

"BLOSSOM!" Bubbles screamed. Every bit of fright left her and she charged the monster with a full frontal assault. The Chimaera therefore turned only to have a blue punch crack its way into its teeth, effectively demolishing part of them. The pain was too much even for the nightmarish being, and the force in its mouth was weakened enough to let a pink streak exit from the death trap (crashing additional teeth in the process).

The two of them flied up away until they reached the ceiling of the laboratory, and only at that moment Bubbles decided to finally ask, "You're all right, Blossom?"

Blossom had parts of her dress literally melted, and on those parts her skin had been consumed, not enough to reach the flesh inside thank goodness. Apart from some additional cuts and purple, dense stains of mutant saliva all over her, she was alright and did not sustain serious injuries.

"I'm okay, but let's try to stop that thing before it does something more than this!" Blossom almost shouted quickly, the experience had clearly made her nervous. Bubbles nodded and the two of them whirled their bodies to face the beast.

The Chimaera was furious beyond any limit. It screeched again and prepared itself to leap again towards the two girls… forgetting about the third one. Buttercup had no mercy whatsoever: she attacked from the back and stormed the mutant with everything she got, and after a minute the damage was so high one of her punches went through its skin. Even Buttercup had to move back when her fist reached the internal parts of the monster's body because of the nausea it gave her.

Blossom and Bubbles finished her work by kicking together the being while it wailed in pain into a group of machines, demolishing everything in its trail. The mutant cried out with another unnatural call before finally getting on its limbs and glaring and the Powerpuff Girls. Then, it suddenly turned and sprinted away, towards the hole from where he had appeared.

"After him!" Buttercup shouted, but she was stopped in mid-flight as Blossom grabbed one of her legs.

"Blossom, what the heck? I'm fairly sure that thing has something to do with our man, we have to follow-"

"Buttercup, you want to follow that thing into the tunnel it had made? Going who knows where? It might be a trap or _worse,_ for all we know."

Buttercup frowned at the insistence of her sister, but when she turned to see where the moster was, the being had already disappeared out of sight.

"Great job, Bloss, now it's gone…"

Blossom sighed and released the grip on her sister's leg. She looked around to examine the current state of the laboratory.

"The place is a mess now…" Bubbles said. She was right: the battle, while short, had caused vast damage around the big chamber, and debris of all types were littering the floor. Machines had been destroyed, liquids were spilled everywhere, it was chaos.

"We did not need this…" Blossom said as her sight wandered around, trying to find something at first sight. It was hard to find anything before, now it was nearly impossible.

"Girls, wait. I think I see something down there," Buttercup informed. Her two sisters cocked their heads interrogatively, but she did not explain herself, deciding to move directly into the object that had captured her attention.

The brunette landed between cracked wood and pieces of metal, in front of what seemed to be a steel box, half covered by other wreckage parts. A genius wasn't needed to understand that it was hidden before, and that the attack of the mutant had somehow helped them with their task.

Buttercup hovered over the suspicious object and cleaned the surface out of the debris, revealing what seemed to be a lock. Blossom and Bubbles joined her at her sides shortly after.

"I think we just hit jackpot," Buttercup said before grabbing the lock and tearing it away from the box like nothing. Blossom raised an eyebrow but did not scold her. There was neither time nor reasons to be careful in this case.

The green puff slowly opened the case. Inside, the Powerpuff Girls found an overwhelming quantity of paper. Folders, files, all types of documents on which the girls easily recognized the handwriting as the one of Professor Laurentium. They didn't even have to dig into the contents as one of the top cartels had a certain name plastered on its cover.

_PORTER – POST GENERAL LAB ACCIDENT._

Buttercup took the cartel and opened it, revealing words written in Esperanto.

"Huh, that weird language again... Bubbles, it's up to you again," she said as she passed the document over to her sister. Bubbles took a breath of fresh air and started reading out the first words.

* * *

_Porter is alive. He's been trying to stay in the dark, but his attempts to spy over my work have been easily tracked by my control detectors. I should have already given this information to the authorities… but I don't know what to do. Porter should be dead, but he's not… and how is that possible makes me fear about what he's capable to do._

_I have no idea if anyone is going to find these papers, but if you do, it means that I'm not here anymore, be that an accident or Porter's work. There you'll find everything I've been able to learn about him and its current whereabouts until the last moment I touched the cartel. From locations to activities… everything._

_I pray that this will be enough to help you stop Porter… before his own madness does more damage and inflicts more pain than he already did._

* * *

The girls exchanged a glance without a word. Then, Bubbles began to go through the pages fast, looking for the only info they needed right now: Porter's hideout location.

Because they now knew that Donnie was in great danger.


	5. The Scheme

Slowly, he started to feel again. He tried to move his hands and legs around, just to make sure they were still there, and he was satisfied to discover they were. Momentarily oblivious to the world around him, almost even to who he was, he timidly opened his eyes.

Then, a blinding light hit his pupils, and with it all the memories of the recent events returned to Donnie, boosting up his powers and energies while at the same time cancelling every trace of the drug he had been injected by. The girls, the Rowdyruff Boys, the surprise attack, Mojo Jojo, the energy cage.

_Porter._

The boy sat up from his lying position. He was still closed in the energy cage, the bars emitting an annoying light all around the place. The room was different from the previous one… no more screens or control modules, this chamber was way bigger and more similar to a common laboratory. Donnie noticed that only the walls were effectively covered by concrete: the ceiling was made of rock and terrain, and there was a simple metal frame supporting it. It was far from him… he would have been able to fly easily here, if he had the chance.

Maybe there was a way to cave into the earth above and reach the surface… but there was no way to tell how much down in the ground he-…

"Good. You're awake. It's time to begin."

Donnie quickly turned in alarm and he found himself in front of the major responsible of his current situation.

"What are you going to do, Porter?" Donnie hissed, the hostility clear in his voice.

"Hmmm, you know my name?" the Doctor asked, ignoring his question. His tone was one of sincere curiosity.

"I know _everything_ of you, Porter," Donnie explained, "the Professor has written about you in his journal. Your wrongdoings in particular… and I know there is no way you're up to anything good."

Doctor Porter laughed to his response, and Donnie felt his fists tighten. How this was so entertaining was beyond him.

"Oh, poor old Bronislav. I was really getting on his nerves, wasn't I? Oh well, I can say that the feeling was mutual… but you are wrong, infra-human. Bronislav didn't know everything about me… and, consequentially, you _don't."_

Donnie narrowed his eyes… but didn't open his mouth to speak. _He was right._ Because for all he knew, Doctor Porter should have been dead by that moment, lost in the debris of Ultrapolis' General Lab incident. But here he was, standing in front of him, that hateful smile plastered on his face.

Unless Professor Laurentium didn't write everything he knew about Porter in his journal.

Doctor Porter stared at the boy, still keeping his amused expression. "There is so much you don't know about me… about your own creator. But that is not my problem. My colleague should actually arrive any moments now."

He remained silent, and Donnie actually heard voices getting nearer to the room. Obviously the Doctor by colleague meant Mojo Jojo, but there was someone else with him, who could possibly-.

Donnie gasped. This was not good. _Not at all._

The nearest side door slowly opened, the metal screeching as the two parts slid into their hatches in the side walls. Then, Mojo Jojo marched into the laboratory, still frowning at the sight of Doctor Porter… followed right after by the Rowdyruff Boys.

"I really hope you're not making us waste our time, Mojo. For your own integrity, I mean…" Brick warned as he glanced around the room, at first failing to notice Doctor Porter and his capture.

"You may have some respect, Rowdyruff, as I, Mojo Jojo, will not tolerate any more of your pathetic threats!" Mojo Jojo uttered, but Brick only scoffed in response and ignored him. That was when Doctor Porter walked up to meet the new arrivals, and the boys actually realized there was someone else in the room.

"Ugh, who's this guy? A four-eyes? I thought you were allying with a cool man, Mojo," Butch commented, unimpressed by Porter's look. Boomer cocked his head, unsure if Mojo was serious or not when he'd mentioned having an interesting business partner.

Porter smirked at the rude boy's remark, "I've lost a few dioptres, that's true, but I assure you that these glasses are more of an habit, I can still use my sight properly without them. Nevertheless, I'll assume Mojo Jojo has already told you about my person…" Mojo Jojo grunted in affirmation, "…so I'll leave presentations out and get to the subject at hand. I have a little offer for you, Rowdyruff Boys…"

"Hold on, four-eyes," Brick interjected, "we didn't get there to take some orders from another clueless villain. The day has already gone to heck, so if you excuse me I'd want to take off and leave this darn city to go break some stuff to cool down… away from the Powerpuffs."

Boomer and Butch nodded. They seriously hated to be beaten by the Powerpuff Girls, but today they had been literally destroyed in a four against three battle. As much as they'd have liked to give the girls and their sissy friend a lesson not to be forgotten, they just wanted to take their leave.

Porter brought one of his hands to his chin, and he observed in thought the three boys for some seconds. "I understand," he finally replied, "but let me just finish my speech. The Powerpuff Girls are coming right here, and they're coming for me. While I have a fair probability to be able to keep them under control, that would take time and focus, two things I currently not have. I do not want to be bothered for the next half hour, and this is where you three come in. I need you to confront the girls and slow them down, just the time needed to let me and our mutual friend, Mojo Jojo, end our task."

Brick, Boomer and Butch glared at Porter for some seconds, then the leader said, "Nice plan. Too bad we ain't have any part in it. See you later, methuselah!"

"You won't? Not even when you would get to have a first line place to the show where the new friend of the Powerpuff Girls you've recently met will, for starters, be beaten up, then receive the worst of the punishments, and eventually be disposed of?"

That said, the Doctor pointed with one of his steel hands at the energy cage, and the Rowdyruff Boys realized who was entrapped inside. Their looks suddenly changed into more interested expressions, and Porter smiled. On the other hand, Donnie wasn't happy. You know, with the last words Porter had just pronounced concerning his near future.

"Uhhmmm… I must say the idea to see him fall to his knees in defeat and pain… _a lot of pain,_ is not that bad, methuselah…" Brick admitted as he watched Donnie with an evil smile.

"Not bad? That'd be the greatest thing ever! Especially after I see you sissy cry for help, like you should-OUCH!" Boomer trailed, only to have his brother shush him with a rude but efficient hit on the head.

"I assure you, the test that will take place here will have that exact scene as a direct effect," the Doctor explained, "and in addition to this, feel free to accept a little present."

From the depths of his lab coat, Porter picked up what appeared to be a simple key.

"This key enables the controls of one of my Containment Farms. You don't need to exactly know what that is, but I have a feeling that what you will be able to do there is going to be quite an entertaining experience, especially when you unleash _them_ on the Powerpuff Girls. You have absolute free rein."

Porter flung the key towards the Rowdyruff Boys, and Butch quickly flew to catch the object in mid-air. He was _very_ interested.

Brick was trying to maintain his composure, but he was eager to know what the four-eyes was talking about as well. In the end, he gave up to his desires and said, "All right, we'll do it. But nothing more! We ain't save your butt in case the Powerpuffs get through and change those weird metal gloves you have into dust, get it?"

"I've never met a person clearer than you. Exit from that door there," Porter said, motioning them to move towards another entrance at the opposite side of the room, "there should be a map of the main parts of the tunnels right out of this room. Give the paper a quick read to find where Containment Farm VII is, and if you like, to gain an advantage towards the Powerpuff Girls with a good knowledge of the network."

"I like how you think, four-eyes! If only Mojo was like you one bit!" Butch exclaimed as he flew away following the direction Porter showed them, Boomer right on the trail.

Brick rolled his eyes before nodding to the Doctor and hovering away to join his brothers. Soon the three of them left the chamber, leaving Porter alone with Mojo and their prisoner.

"Idiotic boys!" Mojo Jojo bellowed, "Their behaviour towards myself has been far from being bearable! I'll need to show them some sort of respect after all of this is done…"

"Don't mind them, Mojo Jojo," Doctor Porter reassured, "they're just infra-humans, a little more than mere objects, creations of a chemical reaction of unknown properties… until now at least. I just happen to have mastered the art of dialectics and how to get people to believe what I want them to."

Mojo Jojo answered in annoyance, though not angrily, "Umph, I see. I just hope that those brats will actually do something good for once and destroy the Powerpuffs with the mutants you've given them. Hoping that those things actually work…"

 _Mutants?_ Donnie thought as he listened to the villains' discussion, _what are they talking about? What has Porter been doing here?_

"I'm sure they will at least give the female infra-humans a challenge they won't forget. But, we're trailing off. Let's get back to the subject at hand, shall we?"

Mojo Jojo folded his arms before replying, "You were just an inch out of time, Porter… I suppose you are now going to give me some proper explanations, as I, Mojo Jojo, though owning a genius far superior than yours or anyone in the world, have yet to obtain the ability to read humans' minds…"

"Exactly, colleague," Porter said, still acting calmly despite Mojo's not so hidden insults, "You need an introduction of sorts. Now, where to begin? …you see, Mojo Jojo, Professor Laurentium, the creator of this little infra-human here, had been my greatest rival in science and beyond. For the very first time when I met him, I instantly realized how miserable and offensive he and his methods were. I spent the entirety of my time 'fighting' him, trying to show other people how his line of thinking was flawed, how he was just slowing down the process of scientific research…"

"Mmmm, you're moved out of vengeance then? A pitiful motif, but despicable nonetheless…" Mojo commented, scratching his chin. Donnie gritted his teeth in anger… but didn't open his mouth. Porter was talking behind his creator with a mouth full of lies, but he felt like there was something else other than those simple words.

Porter chuckled, startling both Mojo and Donnie. "Sorry, but I expected you to say so. I admit, there was a time where I felt hatred as soon as his face entered my sight… but that is the past now. Once he stopped breathing, he stopped to disturb my thoughts… to be honest, that was actually a sort of liberation. Without Bronislav, I felt like a stone had been just removed from my stomach. What actually delighted me more than anything else, though, wasn't just joy from the news of his death, but the thought that Bronislav had indeed been a poor excuse for a scientist. Just how he died… that was enough to conclude how incompetent he was. But then, his last experiment, the result of his utmost failure… returned to Ultrapolis, and made things right once again."

Porter turned to face Donnie. His neutral face showed signs of anger this time, but Donnie wasn't frightened. If it was anything, he was angrier than him.

"What? Were you surprised by the fact that the Professor had been able to outdo you another time?" Donnie said, glaring at the tall man.

"Hmm. Are you trying to make me lose my temper, infra-human?" Porter asked. "Laughable. No wonder you're just _scrap._ The opposite result of what should have been."

"I don't care what you think, Porter! Say whatever you want, you're just wasting the air…"

"Maybe. Mojo Jojo," Porter continued, facing again the evil monkey, "what I want you to understand is that my target is not to take my revenge towards Laurentium… not him as an individual at least. During the months after I… recovered from an unexpected incident, I built this hideout and continued my experiments without the need to cover my activities or bothers given by the public... or Laurentium himself. I was able to reach new heights with my works, something Bronislav would never have been able to achieve with his useless morals. And when I discovered of his last experiment, I felt like it was the final proof of my superiority over him and his way of working. The object I call infra-human, the one he named 'Donnie'… was supposed to be a failure and nothing more. But he returned and became a hero. Something I could not tolerate…"

The supposed old man closed his fists and the metal screeched under the force as he continued, " 'Donnie' was nothing more than a flawed skeleton of something way better, and I felt the need to demonstrate it. I had tried various times to put him into tests of various sorts, examining its strengths and weaknesses alike. But he had always been able to surpass all of these, be they simple robbers paid by myself, more respectful mercenaries, and such."

 _Wait… the sudden increase in criminality… was not caused by me! It was caused by him!_ Donnie thought, all the clues suddenly clicking and piecing together in his mind. Porter had been until now putting him into these tests, by putting on everything he had been called for by the Mayor the last six months!

Porter watched Donnie. He was scowling: "I reached a point, infra-human, where I had almost consumed every viable option. But then, the idea stroke me…"

* * *

In another room of the tunnel network, two weeks ago, Doctor Porter let a powerful punch fall on one of the tables. The wood broke like paper under the momentum of the metal fist.

The Doctor swore and shouted furiously as he continued to march around and destroy whatever object had the unfortunate idea to stand in his way. The fact that those couldn't decide where to stay wasn't important to him at the moment.

Not too far from the raging man, a pair of old but still working monitors showed two different things: a lizard-like creature of enormous size trying to force his way through the conifer forest in the direction of the Great Lake, and a yellow beam moving over Ultrapolis' skyline.

"Impossible… _Impossible!_ There's no way _it_ could prevail against that!" the Doctor cried, grabbing a shelf full of books and launching it away like pebble. He suddenly stopped and breathed heavily. Despite its 60-year old look, he didn't cough or do anything more than slowing his breath rate down.

"Calm down… calm down… This was a possibility, after all. I'll just have to put back my schedule… It's not over yet."

He passed one of his metallic hands over his forehead, which was completely devoid of sweat, before eventually walking away from the little destruction he had caused, moving towards another area of the room. There he stood and looked at a series of blackboards, opened books and scribbled paper. Every one of these was full of notes concerning everything around the Puff question. The amount of reference to the Powerpuff Girls, their enemies and Townsville was astounding… but the main subject of it did not have anything to do about them. It was about something much more important… _Donnie._

"One month of work… useless…" Porter muttered to himself as he sat down beside one of the tables and right away wrote a 'FAILURE' over a cartel. Then, he took all the papers he could see and put them inside the cartel, effectively cleaning the tables from the chaos.

"…but it cannot be. There must be one flaw inside that thing. One weakness, one test he won't be able to overcome. One that will put an end to its existence…"

Doctor Porter took a pen and began drawing with surprising ability. In a few seconds, a black-and-white version of Donnie appeared on the paper.

"…one error in the formula, in the method. One error in the purpose…"

At the word, 'purpose', Porter suddenly realized that he had been drawing without really thinking, and he stared in shock at the paper. He had drawn unknowingly a form that was obviously supposed to be a copy of the first drawing, but it was unfinished. It looked like Donnie was standing right beside his own silhouette.

The doctor suddenly stood up from his chair, uttering, "I cannot believe it... How hadn't I thought about this before?"

He quickly walked away, moving with ease between the shadows of the objects around him, before stopping in front of a wall that was full of dossiers of all sorts. There were various names on the drawers, but Porter was interested in only one, and he remembered correctly its location.

He extracted from the group the drawer with the label 'MOJO JOJO' on it, and he began to navigate through the contents inside.

"Anubi's head… ape army… various alliances… other questionable plans… but it must be here… _ah ha!_ "

His mouth twisted itself into a smile, an _evil_ one, and he extracted the cartel he had been looking for.

"The Rowdyruff Boys. _Exactly."_

He gave a quick read to the notes inside as he thought, _this, this is what I have to do! I have been blinded by the desire to find the weak spot in the infra-human, when I could have done the exact opposite! A much easier way to put it into a test that will finally succeed._

He looked around as he thought, this time aloud, like he wanted to help himself remember his own words, "the chimpanzee known as Mojo Jojo had the rightest of the ideas. He had been unlucky though and had to resort to makeshift means to pursue his goal… something that brought the Rowdyruff Boys to fail. Even in their newly found form they are nothing but a shadow of what they should have been: machines able to destroy everything in their path, including the Powerpuff Girls. Not even the spells of a demon couldn't cure them from their imperfection."

His eyes finally fell on his next target. Beakers, containing a dark orange liquid.

"I, however, are not in that same situation… even so, I'll need all the help I can get the best possible result out of the experiment. To create something that is, from every point of view, perfect, efficient, superior to anything appearing before it. Superior to the Powerpuff Girls. Superior to the Rowdyruff Boys. Superior to Donnie."

Doctor Porter clapped his hands. "It's sealed. This time, the test will end up with a positive result. _Let's get to work."_

* * *

Mojo Jojo eyed Porter with a raised eyebrow, before saying, "I have my own doubts about this plan, one that I, Mojo Jojo, have already tried to follow, will succeed. But you were right, at the time I had to use something different from Chemical X, or that analogue chemical you appear to use on this continent. Seeing it like I imagined it in my own mind is something that tempts without a doubt… I may give you my precious advice, but hope that the final result will be something worth my time!"

"When the test will be finished, I will lose interest in all of this, Mojo Jojo," Porter reassured, "but I'm sure that the _new arrival_ will be eager to measure its strengths with your own enemies as well as our infra-human here…"

Mojo Jojo nodded, finally finding a good reason to help Doctor Porter out. But there was someone in the room that wasn't of the same idea.

"You're… you're mad!"

Porter kneeled down beside the energy cage and observed Donnie with an obnoxious grin. "Mad? I'd say that's relative to who says it…"

"You can't! You can't do that! …I will stop you! I won't let you create… _do anything!"_

Donnie was absolutely terrified by the prospects of Porter's plan. There was no way to tell what could be created out of Porter and Mojo's hands with the Unidentified Y… _no way._ He had heard about the mutants… and now _this._ He knew how strong the Rowdyruffs were, despite Porter words about them. If it wasn't for the girls, he probably would have been lying on the ground in Ultrapolis' outskirts by now. He knew how they were the most dangerous out of the enemies of the girls, the ones who had been the closest to defeat them.

…and now, Porter wanted to put his own signature on the subject. By creating another ruff… _or worse._

…no. He couldn't let him do that. He needed to stop him before he could do something bad. He was stronger than he was six months ago, that was not something Porter couldn't say wasn't true. He knew he could do it. No matter the cost.

Donnie was determined, and he watched Porter right into eyes without moving back. But the Doctor wasn't surprised.

"Stubborn, little boy. While I'm not interested in anything but the test itself, I think I'll enjoy seeing you wheeze and cough in pain and despair, at the mercy of _my_ creation."

He stood up, losing interest in him, and he approached Mojo Jojo, who was actually entertained by the spectacle. "Let's get started. The first problem we need to deal with are the ingredients. We have to-"

The ground trembled, and a thundering sound echoed through the room and the walls around. Pieces of ceiling fell around as well.

"The Powerpuff Girls." Mojo Jojo simply said. "The brats are here. I could recognize their method of _sneaking in_ from any possible distance."

"We have to be fast, then. It wouldn't be polite to let them arrive while we're still working, would it?"

* * *

"BUTTERCUP!"

"What? You just told us we needed to break in!" Buttercup protested.

"I did not ask you to blast the door like that! Now everyone in the entire country know we're here!" Blossom replied, pointing an accusing finger towards her sister.

"Hey, but wasn't Ultrapolis supposed to be semi-independent? We technically aren't in a 'country'…" Bubbles said, only to have the redhead fire the most fearful of her glares towards her. The blonde girl gulped and quickly added, "Heh, just saying, Blossom…. Not important after all…"

"Well, if you two are done talking about geography, I have a friend to save and a four-eyes to deal with!" Buttercup informed before sprinting into the darkness of the tunnel they had just opened.

"Buttercup! Wait!" Blossom called before flying in an attempt to keep up with her. Bubbles shrugged before hovering up and flying into the tunnel herself.

Buttercup had not flied far, though. In a minute, Bubbles and Blossom found her in stationary flight in what seemed to be an intersection of multiple tunnels. Some of them were closed by manmade doors, others were not, but in general there was just enough light to let normal humans see through. One of the opened tunnels was actually completely void of light.

"Oh man, not again…" Buttercup complained as she looked around in search of a path to follow. No info labels were present whatsoever, thus preventing the girls from choosing the right direction at once.

"A tunnel system… the Doctor has surely worked a lot to get these tunnels done," Bubbles commented.

"Yeah, and that will slow us down. Again!" Blossom exclaimed, "We don't have the time to explore all of these galleries, for all we know they may be miles long… we need to think smart."

Her eyes darted around the openings until her pupils stopped over one of the metallic doors. "It must be one of these doors. Porter wouldn't have built them if he didn't want to protect something."

"Good thought, leader girl… Now let _me_ handle this," Buttercup grinned as she prepared an energy blast on the hand, but Blossom blocked her arm before she could launch it.

"No, Buttercup. We do like _I_ say," she said. Then, she hovered in front of the door, just the distance needed to let the sensors sense an obstruction and the two halves slid into the walls, opening the door.

"See? As always, intelligence beats muscles," Blossom said, winking at her brunette sister. Buttercup scoffed before replying with a simple, "Lame…", but she nonetheless followed her along with Bubbles. The three of them flied through the new tunnel, which slowly changed its appearance: more pavement, more concrete protecting the sides, more signs of human presence.

In a minute, they reached another metallic door, which creaked open mechanically as soon as they were in front of it. There was no simple intersection of tunnels however ahead of them.

The girls hovered into the new chamber, to find something they did not expect. The space was far bigger than the tunnel, in every possible direction: a walkway circled what seemed to be a large, deep pool, the contains of which were unknown. The lights that could be spotted on the walkaway in fact were too weak to reach the depths below, so the only clue about what was being kept down there was…

"Bleah!" Buttercup said, visibly disgusted, "What the heck is Porter keeping here? I might not like to wash myself, but this is beyond repair!"

Blossom and Bubbles were of the same idea. The leader girl kept her nose blocked with her hands as she said, "Let's just get going. I see an exit on the opposite side."

Buttercup didn't wait for further orders. She hovered forward, flying directly above the basin.

"Buttercup, wait!" Blossom called, but her sister turned back while still moving towards the other side, saying, "Bloss, there's no way I'm staying here for more than what is needed to cross this pool. Geez, do you like this smell?"

Bubbles wasn't paying attention to what her sisters were doing. There was a tiny sign on the metal fence of the walkway, which contained indications written in Esperanto, and the words weren't reassuring.

_Reproduction Basin #3. Current activity: to be sterilized. Cause: loss of control over the biological evolution and genetic recombination of the basin. Precautions must be taken when entering the Basin._

_Additional Notes: possibilities to have a Titan born in the basin are concrete. Sterilization is URGENT._

Fighting the horrid odour, Bubbles shouted in alarm, "Buttercup! Get out!"

The brunette raised an eyebrow and took an interrogative peek at her blonde sister. "Bubbles, what in the world is wrong with you? There's nothing here but the stink and…"

Buttercup suddenly disappeared from their sight as a tentacle compared out of nowhere between her and her sisters. The tentacle right away thrust itself towards the green puff, but Buttercup, while surprised, was not taken aback and she dodged easily the _thing._

Blossom and Bubbles flied to the rescue as soon as the tentacle came into view, but just as they were going to fire their eyebeams at the thing, two additional tentacles came out of the darkness of the pool and put themselves in front of the two puffs. Blossom and Bubbles didn't stop their movement, however, as they didn't know how Buttercup was doing.

Blossom inhaled a huge gust of air, and a moment after she released a strong wave of Ice-Breath. Taken aback, her tentacle was frozen and fell back into the pool, while Bubbles waited patiently for her tentacle to attack. The appendix suddenly charged forward with its point aimed at Bubbles' chest, but the girl was fast: she avoided the thrust and grabbed the tentacle from the side, stopping it into a steel block. Then, Blossom arrived at her side and she fired her eyebeams at the tentacle, effectively cutting it in two. Bubbles released her grip and the two parts of the appendix fell back from where they came.

The two of them turned to look for Buttercup, but she wasn't in trouble. To be more precise, she was currently ripping her own tentacle apart.

"Haven't they taught you that it's rude to flank people like that?" she taunted as she punched the remains of the tentacle one more time, before letting them fall into the pool again. She then watched Blossom and Bubbles as they approached her and commented, "That was… easy?"

"Too easy…" Blossom added.

"We must get out of here, there's something else he-!"

Bubbles was cut off as something screeched from behind, and finally the real inhabitant of Reproduction Basin #3 made its appearance. The girls slowly whirled their bodies and unconsciously flied back a little bit as they realized what was in front of them.

There was a giant being in front of them, far bigger than the monster they had previously fought in Laurentium's lab. Tentacles of all sorts and lengths dotted its entire body, but apart from that it looked like a disjointed mass of random parts. Only thing that was sure to the girls was that it was _furious._

" _GETOUT!"_

The girls scattered as an army of various tentacles was fired at them from the Titan. But the girls couldn't stop as tentacles began to try to stab or seize them from all directions. It seemed like the Titan had completely filled the entire chamber with its appendixes.

Blossom gritted her teeth and punched forward, getting a tentacle out of her way only to have another one replace it. She fired once again her eyebeams and the laser sliced through it easily. These things were weaker than the previous monster, but they were a lot!

Still flying, Blossom noticed what seemed to be the only viable solution at the moment: the exit they had seen when they had first entered the Basin. Getting an hold of her breath and praying Bubbles and Buttercup would hear it, she cried, "GIRLS! EXIT, NOW!"

She kicked the last tentacle out of her way and dodged the thrust of another, then she zoomed right towards the exit. Tentacles began to pursue her, but she was definitely faster. The Titan roared behind her… or at least emitted a call that could be classified as a 'roar'.

She was the first one to reach the exit. She didn't waste more time than needed and directly broke through it, and as soon as this happened, an alarm began to ring and a third door frame began to slide downwards from above.

Blossom gasped when she realized what she had done and instantly went to stop the thing. She struggled to keep the frame steady, but surprisingly, while she could slow it down, the sheer weight of it was too much. It wasn't Duranium: the emergency door must have been made out of an extremely large piece of metal which was hidden above her. She probably would have been able to keep it up normally, but she was weakened and her breath was stressed.

Her fears were confirmed as she saw Bubbles and Buttercup come towards her with an army of tentacles right on trail. The Titan itself was moving in order to get nearer to its prey as well. Blossom knew that she needed to let the emergency door shut itself just a blink of the eye after her sister made it, or the Titan might have gained the ability to exit the Basin to pursue them.

 _Okay, calm down, Blossom, focus…_ she thought as she frowned in concentration. _Right after they come in, let it go… just a little after… a single instant after…_

"NOW BLOSSOM!" Bubbles shouted as she and Buttercup literally threw themselves into the tiny space left, and Blossom mechanically let the door shut. It collided with the floor with a booming sound, followed by the noises of organic material bumping into the frame.

Bubbles and Buttercup flied to the door and began to push it against the force of the tentacles on the other side, and Blossom joined them in no time after recovering from her focused state. They heard the roars of the Titan as it tried to break free from its prison, but the door did not move of a single centimetre. It had been designed to be resistant even without the presence of the three puffs, with the three of them helping the aberration couldn't do anything.

Suddenly, the hits stopped and the girls let themselves some seconds to regain their breaths and relax. Their heard sounds of something moving over metal, followed right after by a long, terrible wail. Then, it was silence.

"That… that was a close one…" Buttercup said as she cleaned her hands from green mutant blood.

"What is wrong with Doctor Porter?" Bubbles asked, her voice incredibly fearful, "I mean… what kind of man would do something like that other monster back in the laboratory or _this?_ It's… horrible… and ugly…"

Blossom was worried as well. They were used to fight monsters at Townsville, but even those were a production of natural evolution, even though a strange part of it. These mutants however… were unnatural. She shuddered as another unsletting wail came from the now quarantined Reproduction Basin. If she hadn't known what was inside, she probably would have gone inside to see if someone needed help…

"…we need to keep going…" Blossom said, unconvincing, "I know it's hard, but the responsible of all of this is currently keeping Donnie under his grip. He mustn't be too far… Come on, follow me."

She began to walk away without waiting for an answer. Bubbles and Buttercup exchanged a glance before scurrying over to follow her.

They continued to follow the tunnel and get even more into the depths of Porter's hideout. They didn't exactly know where they were going, but this was definitely a part that was inhabited. They found additional Reproduction Basins, which they decided to avoid even when one of them was apparently 'safe' according to the notes, and moved along.

That was until the three of them, at once, began to hear a new noise. It was a dull sound, and to their hears it was like something was being repeatedly smacked into the floor.

"You hear that as well, do you?" Buttercup asked.

"Yeah. What do we do? It might be another one of those things…" Bubbles said.

"…ugh… we need to find out. It might be Donnie as well… you know, hitting the ground hoping for someone to hear him or break through…"

"I have a bad feeling about this, Bloss..." Buttercup noted.

"I know, Buttercup. But we don't have a choice."

They kept silent and resumed their pace, moving towards the source of the noise. They turned to some intersections and passed various other chambers. Now there were various types of rooms available: Minor Laboratories, Archives, and other chambers with complex names.

 _This place is huge… Doctor Porter must have been building this for so long,_ Blossom thought as she looked around. The noise was getting nearer, and in no time they found themselves in front of the autodoor which separated them from the source. Bubbles read out the side label for her sisters: _Containment Farm VII._

"What in the world is a Contraption Farm?" Buttercup commented, unimpressed.

"It's Containment… and I have no idea what that's supposed to be… we have to enter," Blossom sighed. She made the first step and the two halves of the door slid into the wall, letting them enter the new area.

The new room was comparable to the Reproduction Basin in size, but there was no pool and the floor and bottom of it coincided. The most noticeable feature was visible on the walls: every available spot was in fact occupied by a cell, and every cage contained at least a living mutant. There were hundreds of cages on the sides, which according to math implied that even more mutants were in the room.

The girls walked towards the centre and they cringed when the mutants, without a doubt feeling their presence, began to emit all types of sounds and noises. Most of them were disturbing to hear.

"Blossom, Buttercup… They're scary… I can't even follow what they're saying… It's like they're constantly screaming in pain…" Bubbles cried as she kept herself close to the other two. Buttercup was on full alert, ready for an attack at any moment, while Blossom was currently trying to decide what to do. Despite the chaos made by the mutants, she was sure that the noise they had been following had stopped.

"I can't hear that noise anymore… maybe it was one of those creatures. We might as well keep going… Bubbles, keep calm," she said, turning to her frightened sister, "just ignore them. They cannot harm us until they're imprisoned in their cells."

"That's the point, Blossy."

The speed with which the Powerpuff Girls reacted by flying in the air and posing themselves in battle stance would have astonished the coolest of the monks.

"Rowdyruff Boys!" Blossom exclaimed, recognizing the voice of Brick right away. The Boys were not visible to them, not yet, but they were without a doubt in the surroundings, hidden somewhere. The girls slowly hovered into in triangle formation, covering each other's backs.

"Wow, Pinkie, you always seem to be on the spot," the voice of Brick replied sarcastically. It was disturbed, and it was clear to the girls that the boy was talking through a microphone. Their thoughts weren't far from the truth as Brick, Boomer and Butch were currently hidden into one of the side-cells, which was in reality a disguised control room.

Blossom ignored the remark and continued on, "Why am I not surprised to hear your voice here? You're just the type of guy who would ally with someone as Doctor Porter!"

"Methuselah just gave us an offer we liked, Blossy… and I assure you, you're all going to experience what kind of offer that was!"

"Just try it, suckers!" Buttercup challenged, momentarily forgetting where she was. Blossom sighed, and prepared for the worst.

"Okay, Butch, your turn. Try to free something easy to begi-"

"Free the biggest one! Free the biggest on-"

_BONK!_

"Ow!"

"I'm not going to spoil all the fun already! …just do something, Butch, before I consider giving Boomer as food to one of those things…"

"Aye, aye! …Hahaha! Try to resist to this, Powerpuffs!"

The girls tensed up as a command was activated and internal mechanisms began to work behind the walls around them. Slowly, a group of cages opened itself… and the prisoners inside fled right away, after which they began to descend the cages and move towards the girls.

The creatures were once again a complete different being from the previous ones. They were surprisingly small, not much bigger than the girls themselves. The moved like beetles with three pairs of legs, and their face was a mangled mess. They, however, had enormous eyes without pupils which were fixed on the girls they were trying to reach, of which the colour varied depending on the individual. The appearance was completed by a thick cover of _spikes_ on the backs of all the mutants: long, sharp, and deadly spikes.

"Butch, those things don't seem like a big deal to me…"

"Hey, it's written there they're actually pretty dangerous! Look, they're called Porcupines, and…"

"Guys, watch, they're going to fight!"

The Rowdyruff Boys went to the windows of the disguised control room and stared at the upcoming battle. The girls were still motionless in their triangle formation, while the porcupines were slowly trying to flank them. Some additional seconds, and they would have surrounded the puffs.

Blossom continued to keep one of the porcupines under her sight, the mutant stood up on its back legs and made an aggressive noise comparable to a squeal, while saying, "Okay girls, we can do this. I don't know what those things can do, but they can't fly for sure. Keep your distance and blast them from where they can't hurt you, all right?"

"You mean we're actually going to fight them?" Bubbles asked.

"Yeah, I mean, these mutants aren't worrying me that much, but what about the boys? Those idiots might even release the full showcase of monsters against us anytime," Buttercup added.

"We'd still need to beat the mutants to reach them… Girls, Donnie must be near. Porter must have ordered them to slow us down."

"So your suggestion is…?"

"Deal with this battle as fast as possible, then go and save our friend!"

"Sounds good to me."

The plan settled, the girls focused their full attention to the porcupines. Just in time, as one of them squealed what seemed to be an order, and suddenly the entire pack stood up, but on the opposite way, on the front paws. That way, their backs were facing the girls, while they still kept their eyes on them.

"What in the world are they-"

Sounds of what seemed like hundreds of tiny explosions were heard, and an instant later a barrage of spikes was fired.

"UP, NOW!" Blossom ordered, and the three of them immediately flied up, barely avoiding the attack. The spikes hit nothing but air, and the barrage was so thick some of them even collided with each other.

"Are you kidding? They fire those spikes? Wasn't that supposed to be a legend or something?"

"They aren't real porcupines, Buttercup," Blossom corrected, "but that doesn't matter. Come on, eyebeams!"

The Powerpuff Girls began to retaliate, firing lasers from their eyes at the pack below. But the porcupines were not only snipers but also quick creatures, as they proved to be capable of dodging the eyebeams fired by the girls' eyes and respond with more spikes. For an entire minute, the two sides skirmished without one of the parts actually getting an hit.

The Boys simply continued to view the battle from their safe location, eager to see more action anytime soon. For them, this was not much more than a simple game.

Then, Buttercup suddenly lost her patience, and instead of using heat vision again, she charged an energy blast on her hand and fired the thing at one of the porcupines. Once again the mutant avoided the attack, but this time the blast exploded with a green thunder, far more powerful than a classic eyebeam one. The porcupine was too near and the shockwave hit it full force: it literally disintegrated as soon as it touched its body.

"Huh! Just as weak as I thought…" Buttercup grunted in boredom. Blossom and Bubbles, after registering the event, followed her sisters' example. The porcupines were fast, but not enough to get away from the blasts before the shockwaves could hit them, so in less than a minute the pack was decimated to two members.

"Oh, they're already winning…" Butch's voice commented, sadly.

"They aren't! Let me free something more of these things, and these ones as well…" Brick thought out loud.

The girls were ready to deal with whatever monster the Rowdyruffs were going to send against them, but Bubbles thoughts went beyond that. They were losing time here, and there was only one way to stop the mutants from being released: stopping the ones who were releasing them.

She gazed around the chamber, until her eyes fell on a suspicious element: a cell that was a little different from the others. There was glass between the bars… her supervision wasn't deceiving her! That must have been the place where the boys were hiding!

Without telling her sisters, Bubbles sprinted towards the now discovered control room. Blossom and Buttercup both shouted, "Bubbles!", but the blue puff was sure she could do it. No more boys, no more mutants, no more creatures to kill.

But one of the survived porcupines wasn't of the same idea. The tiny remains of the brain that were plastered in the mutant's skull analysed the situation: the redhead and the brunette were distracted, the blue one was too focused and flying on a straight path. An occasion that couldn't be wasted.

Quietly and without squealing, the porcupine once again stood up on its front paws, and it focused its gaze on Bubbles. When Blossom turned back to control the two remaining mutants, she only had the time to gasp as a single spike was shot from the porcupine's back. She fired her eyebeams on instinct, but they missed their target and instead hit the mutant, which literally broke apart as it went right through it.

Blossom tried to be as fast as she could as she cried, "BUBBLES, DIVE, NOW!". But Bubbles was completely immersed in her attempt to reach the ruffs, she was only fifty meters away from the control room and she had even managed to get a glimpse of the boys, who were messing around with the commands. Therefore, she didn't dive or move sideward when she heard Blossom call, but just turned while keeping herself in mid-air and without slowing down. The spike was basically on her when she realized she was in danger.

Thank goodness, it missed its main target, Bubbles' heart… but it scored an hit nonetheless.

The pain shot through her body like an electrical shock, and she let out an ear-piercing shriek.

"BUBBLES!"

The last porcupine didn't even have the time to react as Buttercup was on it and she launched a single powerful kick at it. The head of the mutant flied away and the rest of the corpse collapsed, but she didn't mind as she immediately flied to join Bubbles and Blossom, who was already there.

Somehow, the spike had been able to go through the blue puff's skin, completely ignoring the superpowered protection it should have provided, and Bubbles had therefore been stabbed in her right arm, the spike literally half-way through her arm. Blossom tried to soothe her sister and calm her down, but it was hard to considering how painful the wound was.

"We… we need to remove it…" Buttercup stated, matter-of-factly. Blossom nodded before speaking to her other sister, "Bubbles… this is going to hurt… but we need to do it. Stay with me, okay?

Bubbles, her eyes full of tears, nodded in silence and tightened her grasp on Blossom's hand with her left one. Buttercup approached them and carefully took a hold of the spike… then, after counting to three, with one fast movement, she slid the thorn away from the wound.

Bubbles gritted her teeth, and Blossom actually frowned as her hand suddenly began to hurt under her sisters' grasp… but she didn't scream in pain and remained silent. Blood poured out of the hole… there was a possibility that her powers could stop the loss of it after some time, but without proper care Bubbles had her arm completely out of commission.

"It's okay… it's gone now, you're all right…" Blossom reassured, trying to comfort Bubbles. Buttercup examined the spike for a little before passing it to the redhead.

 _What kind of thing would be sharp enough to do this… What about Duranium? Has Porter somewhat created those things to naturally create it?,_ Blossom thought. But as she controlled the spike with her free hand, she didn't found any sing of the metal. The spike was extremely sharp… but was simply organic. _If it's not Duranium… then how? How these spikes or even the claws of the monster back at the lab are able to hurt us so easily? What did Porter do to-…_

"Done playing the doctor? Because, if I were you, I'd look behind me…" Boomer's voice boomed jokingly, followed by the groans of his brothers. Buttercup turned and was met with the sight of another pack of porcupines, which squealed in surprise as she dived into the group without notice with a war cry. Blossom remained with Bubbles… she knew that Buttercup could do it without help, but also because of another approaching hazard.

A swarm of new, flying creatures was coming right against them and Bubbles. On this one, they were alone.

_What kind of nightmare have we got ourselves into?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …okay. THIS. This has been a hard chapter to write. The first part in particular... I really hope I got the main villain's personality right. He's supposed to be a strange villain, different from the canon ones but not much better than them moral-wise. He has no interest in harming others like, for example, Mojo does, but he will show no mercy for the fools who dare to step in his path. Moreover, his motives can be classified as weak, which makes him even more despicable in my opinion: worse than a bad guy is a bad guy with futile motives.
> 
> Now, talking about another subject. I've used the term 'Duranium' before in 'The Perfect Little Boy', and I've finally decided to keep it as a canon (to the fanfiction) element in the sequel. While I'm mainly using it as a background feature, I feel the need to give a little description of the basic concept and from where it comes, so here it is.
> 
> Duranium is supposed to be the only metal in the world capable of sustaining Powerpuff powers and able to reach levels of thinness and sharpness sufficient to cut through Puff skin like a simple knife would cut through butter. It is extremely hard to make and needs not only time but specific materials, which make it fairly rare.
> 
> I've read some fanfictions that mention Duranium, and the ones I've read go back to the early years of the fandom, when the show (the original one) still aired on TV or the immediate years after. While I don't know who invented it, keep in mind that it's not my idea at all, I'm just burrowing a concept that had already been used by other authors before me and modifying it a little to use in my little story here.
> 
> I can safely say we're now halfway through the story. I might have to split in half the next chapters… I have definitely developed a bad habit of writing long chapters. Hoping I've kept you interested so far!


	6. Hitting Rock Bottom, Part One

"Snips, tails and puppy dog tails… these were the ingredients chosen to create the ultimate villain, counterparts able to _break_ the Powerpuff Girls where others had failed. While it is strange to consider it so, I believe that this choice of ingredient was actually wise," Doctor Porter remarked.

Mojo Jojo scoffed, but he nodded. "Yes, that was the most perfect decision I had made, as the Rowdyruff Boys were made with the precise intent to counter the accursed Powerpuffs, and in order to reach that target those were the ingredients I decided to use. If only I had real Chemical X at my disposal… I wouldn't be here yet trying again to destroy them!"

"Your search may end sooner than you expect… my friend," Porter said with an evil smile. Mojo Jojo grunted and, deciding to ignore the fact he had dared, a simple human, to call him, a superior genius, _friend,_ he continued, "In any case, I suppose that's _not_ your final goal. You don't want to create a counterpart of this pathetic male puff, but something far better… am I right?"

"Yes… and no, Mojo Jojo. You see, the Rowdyruff Boys, the original version you made, had a weakness… but apart from that? They defeated the Powerpuff Girls. Badly. I still think about how the female infra-humans had the chance to get revived after what happened to them, when I go through all the info I've accumulated concerning Utonium's creations… but that's not important. The Rowdyruffs were far more powerful, smarter, more skilful… They were _better._ And I believe that is proof that the Rowdyruff recipe stands far better than the Powerpuff one for my goal."

"So…a ruff, following my recipe, that is your idea? I suppose that would be possible…"

"Exactly. And, while I'm not interested in creating a direct counterpart of Donnie… no, my creation _won't_ be a simple counterpart… I believe that to put our infra-human here into a more interesting test, we need to put him and my creation into a more… _tense_ situation, something helped by a natural difference…"

Mojo Jojo was no fool, and he caught on quickly, "…a girl, you say? Mmmm…" he began grinning, "…wicked… a ruff girl, huh? It may work… but the Rowdyruff Boys were made to be males, as that was part of the counterpart idea. Their masculine personalities were built from the base recipe…"

"It's simple. Donnie was made out of sugar, spice and everything nice… and the last ingredient proved to be the one who determined the gender. I theorize that, likewise, the ruff's gender is similarly decided by the last ingredient of the recipe…"

"And the opposite of puppy dog tails is… kitty cat tails," Mojo Jojo finished.

"You just read my mind. Snips, and snails, to define the behaviour and basic instincts. Kitty cat tails for the gender."

Mojo Jojo thought over Porter's line of thought for some seconds… before finally erupting into an evil laugh, "That's it! It is not something that is expected to exist, it's a new creation not even the Powerpuff Girls will be able to stop, as they're unprepared and won't be able to do anything while they will be annihilated by not a counterpart, but a superior being! Fighting fire with fire… for real, this time."

He hastily turned towards Doctor Porter, a look full of interest and malice, "I admit, your idea might be effective in theory. We shall see how it does in practice!"

"Excellent! That's what I needed to hear… the confirmation of the one who came closer of them all to the excellence that is my aim. Now, we will decide about the balance and get to work on the mixture itself. Follow me to the part of the chamber where I have already stored the fresh ingredients we need…"

Mojo Jojo followed Porter towards another part of the lab… thus leaving Donnie alone, still trapped in the energy cage. He was speechless.

What Porter wanted to do was completely out of his mind… craziness that could only result in harm to everyone around him… if not himself. He was stunned by how he seemed so sure of himself… by how his line of thought was, actually, extremely logical.

He was really going to do it. To create a girl… not a counterpart of him, no… much worse.

He couldn't let that happen. He had a new ace in the hole from last time… and the cage was not going to stop him now that the two villains were busy elsewhere.

Carefully, Donnie stood up and approached the energy cage, the bars fizzling with pure energy. Without letting himself get dazzled by the light, he concentrated and began to move his hands in front of himself. Slowly, a force field began to appear, just a blur in the air, but Donnie did not stop… He was in visible struggle as the force field, instead of getting bigger, began to modify its own form.

In less than half a minute, the force field had assumed the same shape of a geometric cylinder, devoid of both the circle surfaces. Donnie, his eyes narrowed and some sweat coming down his cheeks, made a forward move with his hand and the incorporeal contraption quietly moved. It touched the metal energies, which were easily stopped and began to go around the object to connect with each other, thus creating a hole into the cage and a way out.

Fast, Donnie unfocused and threw himself out of the cage, through the cylinder, just in time as the modified force field lasted for just a split second with the sudden lack of energy provided by the yellow puff. The cylinder disappeared and the bars returned to their usual places… without making more noise than the usual one the cage normally did.

Donnie sighed in relief before forcing himself to stand up. He had managed to get out without having the two villains hear him… now it was time to get both of them with a surprise attack. He knew what Mojo was capable of, but he was confident he could beat him… the same, however, couldn't be said for Doctor Porter.

He just hoped he could slow down the creation of the girl until the girls found the room he was currently located in.

He floated upwards and moved in the lab, following the voices of Doctor Porter and Mojo Jojo as they discussed their work.

"…the concoction is ready. Are you sure you want to make only one?" Mojo Jojo demanded. That was a choice he did not like… why making only one if he could do tons of others? He had plenty of all the three ingredients as he had showed him.

"Because I only need one to test with my late colleague's creation. But do not worry… I believe the test will be successful, and if that happens, your enemies won't stand any chance if they try to stop _it."_

"I really hope that's true…" Mojo Jojo growled, visibly not convinced. This guy may have been evil, but he was too much irremovable in his weird ideas. As soon as he had helped him destroy the four puffs, he would have had to get rid of him. He did not like the prospect of having him as an obstacle towards world domination.

"Now that the base is ready, we need the catalyst or fourth ingredient… and again, we will derail a little from your recipe. Chemical X is rare, but what I want to do is to succeed where Laurentium failed… What we're going to use is… Unidentified Y."

"The European homologue of Chemical X… I see. I've done my researches as well, so spare me the explanations."

"As you wish. We just need a single flask, and then we'll be ready to complete our… _wait."_

Donnie froze. He was just ten meters away from the villains; he did not make any sound… not one he himself could hear. But despite this, Porter slowly turned and faced him. He folded his arms as he registered his presence… followed right after by Mojo's screech.

"CURSES!" he shouted as he drew out a laser rifle out of nowhere and armed it, "How can it be that you were able to escape the cage that I, Mojo Jojo, designed with the sole purpose to imprison you?"

"It seems like Donnie has learned some new abilities from your last encounter with him, Mojo Jojo. But don't worry… I'll deal with him," Porter informed as he walked a few steps forward, putting himself in front of Donnie.

"Colleague, I need you to look over the mixture and keep it ready for the last phase of our experiment until I solve this momentary interruption. We'll-"

"You dare to give me _orders?!"_ Mojo was furious, "I won't let the boy go unpunished as I act like your puppet, Porter!"

Porter frowned, though he was wise enough to keep his face turned to Donnie, "But Mojo, your role here is one of utmost importance. Remember what we're going to do here… something remarkable, which will be remembered in the years ahead, and will help you dispose of your enemies. Do not worry… Donnie will soon _regret_ his recent decision."

Mojo Jojo glared at Porter's back, but he eventually growled in anger _without_ shooting his colleague in the back. "So be it… but watch your words, Porter… You may not be able to obtain my forgiveness next time!"

"It won't happen again," Porter said, though his face was slightly annoyed. He then finally focused utterly on the yellow puff in front of him, who had waited for the two villains to conclude their bickering. Without Porter, Donnie knew that Mojo alone wouldn't have been able to complete the creation… he just needed to take the scientist out.

If only that were easy.

Donnie kept his face stoic and hostile as Porter kept his eyes locked on him. After some seconds, the doctor smiled.

"Heh… I feel you want to stop me Donnie. To stop what is inevitable… but I'm curious. Come on," he taunted as he hit his own chest with one, metallic hand, "come and get me, Donnie. Show me what you have… show me that your pathetic, utterly useless and meaningless life has at least some strength in it!"

Donnie knew that Porter was just trying to get on his nerves. But he wasn't just insulting him… useless, meaningless… Porter was still able to criticize his creator, even while talking of something else. The thought made Donnie lose some of his inner control… he remembered the explanation Porter gave for his actions… and that made him madder.

With a war cry, Donnie flied forward at full speed, fists ready to strike.

Porter smirked and limited himself to raise a hand and direct it towards Donnie. With a *click* sound, the metal began to move and creak, and the hand transformed into a gun… or, to use a more correct term, a _cannon._

Porter's Hand Cannon fired just a moment before Donnie could reach the Doctor. The puff was run over and thrown back by the shockwave as what seemed to be numerous shells tried to navigate their way into his body. The powered skin managed to protect Donnie from the shotgun shells, though they still made him yelp in pain.

He stopped his flight before he could collide with something, just as Porter said, "I know you can do better than this, infra-human. _Again!"_

The request was fulfilled as Donnie gained some height in the laboratory and began to charge up energy grenades. In response, Porter rotated his metallic hand and something in the Hand Cannon changed its position. A moment later, he began shooting explosive shells towards Donnie, who in turn started the bombardment. Donnie was fast enough to avoid the shells, which exploded around the lab, destroying chunks of it as well as parts of the external walls… but Porter did not seem to mind. He was completely concentrated on the battle.

Donnie didn't see Porter fight before, so his eyes widened when he saw how much fast the Doctor could move to evade his grenades. The controlled detonation was of no help, and if there was a yellow sphere Porter couldn't actually escape from, he would just shoot it with his Hand Cannon.

There was something he still didn't know about Porter… that speed was inhuman. But he couldn't _fly,_ of that Donnie was certain. He hoped to be.

Changing his tactic, Donnie stopped to prepare his grenades and swooped down, making a 90 degrees turn just above the ground and moving towards Porter at full speed.

This time, Porter didn't use the shotgun mode of his Hand Cannon, but he made it change back into the robotic hand. Then, he put himself in battle stance and waited for Donnie's arrival.

Donnie prepared to kick him with all the strength he had, and Porter merely raised his arms in defence. Therefore, his feet collided with the Doctor's parry and the noise of metal echoed throughout the surroundings.

But Porter did not even flinch at the attack. Donnie was astonished and taken aback, that was not supposed to be parried that easily, but Porter was not surprised. He launched his left fist towards the little boy, hitting him in the head and sending him rolling some meters away from the scientist's left side.

Donnie gritted his teeth and forced himself to ignore the pain as he stood up and massaged his head, a new headache now appearing in his current list of problems. Porter wore his normal neutral face as he spoke, "I do not intend to weaken you, Donnie. The test ahead is going to be difficult, and I need you to be fresh and ready for it. Otherwise, where would the interesting part be?"

Ignoring the Doctor's ramblings, Donnie leapt at him and began storming him with a series of fast punches. But Porter was just as fast as him, and he parried every one of his attacks with ease. He was as fast as him! As the girls! As the Rowdyruffs! How… how was that even possible!?

Donnie decided to try something else. Just after one of his punches got parried again, he fast created a force field that he pushed against Porter's left side. The Doctor tried to stop it with one hand, but the force field wasn't easily stopped and it just continued to push forward, so that Porter had to use both hands in an attempt to not get ran over by it.

That left an uncovered side that Donnie right away used to launch a powerful kick at Porter's side. The Doctor was sent stumbling back from the hit, but he soon recovered from the attack.

"Huh. Smart," he stated before taking the initiative. He moved in with a kick of one of his steel legs, which Donnie easily dodged by flying around, and the boy counterattacked with a punch. But Porter, instead of trying to block it, launched a punch of his own… right towards Donnie's one.

The fists connected with tremendous force, and the air trembled from the energy released by the impact. Donnie had to retract his hand: Porter's robotic fist had taken the same role of a brick wall, and his own fist only resulted in more pain.

The same couldn't be said for the Doctor, who went for a grab on Donnie's neck. He didn't even have the time to blink as he was snatched into a death grip by Porter's right hand.

"You know, infra-human," he said as he stared at him with a look void of any trace of mercy, "I also had a little accident with the Unidentified Y, like your creator somewhat had. But, unlike him, I was able to survive it… and, in addition, I gained the ability to control the… modifications that occurred to my body."

Donnie kicked, moved, shook himself, waggled, tried everything he could… but the grip of the Doctor did not loosen itself. It tightened.

"I was said to be dead, so I had all the time to dedicate myself to my studies… over Unidentified Y, over my new body… and over you, infra-human. Perseverance… with it, you can obtain everything you want. You just have to be on the right side… the one confident of being successful."

Donnie began to wheeze and struggle to inhale breaths of air. He felt Porter's metallic fingers close in to his pharynx… The force was enough strong to ignore the powers that made his body stronger than most humans… but, after all, it was now clear Porter was no human… not anymore.

"Fight as much as you want, Donnie. I'll continue to defeat you… believe me when I say that it is in your interest to stop your attempts at interrupting the flow of science itself… even if it's the part where I demonstrate that you are not _worth living."_

Porter's brows furrowed as his face got eviler, "It'll be my _pleasure_ to clean my lab from the _remains_ of your corpse… while my creation basks in the _perfection_ I'll make her realization _of."_

His voice lowered as he concluded, "Your creator was a failure Donnie. _You_ are a failure. Do something good for once, and let me do my work."

Then, his left hand reached out and took Donnie's correspondent, shaking arm. He rotated the arm and consequently Donnie's arm turned into an unnatural angle.

Donnie was already tearing up, as Porter's words had already managed to break into his heart. But when he made this last move, the physical pain was added to the system, and he couldn't take it anymore. He let out a heart wrenching shriek that managed to pass through the walls and reach some of the darkest parts of Porter's tunnel network.

Untouched by Donnie's reaction, the Doctor released his grip, letting the kid fall to the ground. He immediately went to soothe his arms… despite the pain, the bones seemed to be alright.

"That was needed to make it clear who is in command. You should be fully recovered for when the test will begin," Porter informed.

"I… will… stop you… you… cannot…" Donnie babbled as he watched Porter with angered, but wet eyes.

"What? Don't you realize what just happened, or do I have to add mental illness to the list of imperfections you seem to own?" Porter asked as he cocked his head. "If I wanted, I could just _crush_ you… right now. Cancel your existence from this planet permanently. I _studied_ you for six months. I know every one of your powers, your strengths, your weaknesses… everything. You can't win against me… _Donnie Laurentium."_

He kneeled down and had the arrogance to pat him on the head as he said with a fake, reassuring tone, "Rest. You'll need it."

Leaving the yellow puff alone as he remained cuddled on the floor, Porter stood up and walked away, until he met up with Mojo Jojo.

"Admirable… that, I must admit. Shall we get back to business?" Mojo Jojo said.

"Of course, my friend. Let me show you, I have a store of Unidentified Y in this very room. The time of the creation is near."

As the two villains walked and disappeared behind a column of shelves, Donnie did not have the force to recover and keep fighting. But that was not because he was out of energy, not for the pain he felt from the arm.

For the sadness that had enveloped him, as Porter's words were etched in his mind.

' _Laurentium was a failure. YOU… are a failure.'_

_Am I… am I a failure?_

He had failed before. He had failed to protect his city from himself; he had failed to fight the evil being who had taken over his mind. If it wasn't for the Powerpuff Girls, where would he be now?

He thought he had improved… but what had he actually done? Porter's was the reason behind the surge in criminality, behind the lizard monster… and he did all of that because of him. No Donnie. No evil Porter. No crime. No monster.

He thought he could make people better. Instead here he was, while the girls were who knows where and instead of getting the vacation they deserved they had to engage a fight with the three most powerful out of their enemies. He thought of Aunt Katja… of what the woman had gone through the first months, to help him get a position in the family and in the city.

He had been wrong. In every way. And now… the failure had reached its limit, because he had _failed_ to beat Doctor Porter. He had failed to prevent him and Mojo Jojo from creating a new superpowered being, and nobody knew what _she_ would do after she was done with him… what would Porter do.

Donnie closed his eyes as he tried to stop them from producing tears… failing. He… was. He was… just a failure. He… He was-.

Donnie's thoughts came to an abrupt stop when something exploded on one side of the room with a loud booming noise, destroying part of the lab in the process.


	7. Hitting Rock Bottom, Part Two

"I'll take care of these of these things. Bubbles, stay behind and try to not draw any attention, okay?"

Bubbles nodded, her face still frowning in pain, and while she began to float at a safe distance Blossom turned to focus once again on the new foes.

There was a swarm of flying creatures coming towards her. Once again, these ones were a completely different type of mutant from the previous fiends they had fought against: the ability of flight was theirs thanks to two pairs of dragonfly-like wings, which they used at a surprisingly high speed. They had just a pair of tiny excuses for legs, so it was clear they didn't rely on them. Just as the porcupines, the new mutants had an almost unrecognizable face, but instead of having two big eyes, they had a group of numerous small ones over their front, and they owned a functioning jaw, though it was devoid of any teeth.

Blossom noticed another feature that put her on guard as soon as she saw it: the bellies and sides of the creatures weren't very thick, and the pink puff was able to see that, inside, something emitted a mild red-yellow light that passed through their skin and changed its brightness along with the creatures' breath rates.

Whatever those things were able to do, she wasn't going to let them hurt her or anyone of her sisters more. With the porcupines, the Titan and the Chimaera, she had learned these mutants were not an enemy to be underestimated.

The swarm was fast, and in ten seconds the first Dragoon reached Blossom. It did not, however, try to attack the Powerpuff Girl head on: the mutant flied to the side of the pink-eyed girl, and just as Blossom began to float away to keep her distance, it opened its toothless jaw to expel… air?

As Blossom came to realize fast, it wasn't simple breath. It was something much hotter… _and dangerous._

Blossom felt like her entire body had been suddenly enveloped by flames. She cried in surprise, and pain, before zooming away from the cloud that the creature had emitted. The cloud was yellow-orange in colour and inside it she could see that what could be described as tiny explosions, fire-crackers-like, which were taking place. The cloud slowly faded, and at the same time what seemed to be drops of an unknown liquid fell from it towards the pavement.

Blossom controlled over her body: there were now some bruises added to the scratches she had previously obtained courtesy of the beast at Bronislav's lab, as well as some burns which were located just where her dress had been reduced to ash. She took a flock of hair in her right palm and took out the fire that was burning it. Normally she would have freaked out about the mess her beautiful hair had been reduced to, but at the moment there were more important matters to think about.

So these arthropod-like beings were able to emit air hot enough to ignite fire and burn her superpowered skin… and hair. No, she knew her skin was able to sustain even more extreme temperatures, the only limit was the time, and she had escaped the attack right away.

…what was that smell? …acid?

Imaginary gears clicked inside Blossom's brain. The cloud… the explosion were chemical reactions, the mutant's breath with the air… the heat was just needed to start them, what really did the damage was that liquid. She didn't know the specifics, but she wasn't in great need of those.

She just had to avoid being enveloped by the creatures' breaths again. And that was something that might not have been as easy as she expected.

Three new dragoons darted towards her, the wings flapping at high speed and their bellies bright as they prepared to let out more of the deadly gas they hid inside them. Blossom charged up her eyebeams and fired a blast towards the nearest one of them.

The creature strangely did not move away to evade the laser, so it was hit with a direct headshot. The blast pierced easily through its body and when it reached the zone where the creature's main weapon was stored, it immediately channelled an explosive chemical reaction. The dragoon was obliterated, parts of it flying everywhere.

The other two dragoons crowed in surprised but did not lower their speed, so Blossom had to fly upwards to avoid being flooded by their breaths. The monsters followed her in hot pursuit, their jaws opened and ready to exhale more of the hot gas. Then, an idea hit Blossom: if heat was the catalyst… maybe she could deny that particular element!

She stopped in mid-flight and inhaled a deep breath before turning to the creatures. The dragoons slowed their speed, ready to evade what they probably expected to be another heat vision blast, but Blossom did something else, using an ability the monsters weren't aware of yet. She let out a strong gust of her special power, Ice-Breath, and the creatures were taken by surprise.

The cold wind engulfed the dragonfly-like beasts, and in three seconds they were entrapped in solid ice blocks; which, of course, instantly began to fall towards the floor, where they crushed in millions of shards. The same could be said for the dragoons, of course.

Blossom rotated her head only to see more of the dragoons getting around her… they now knew the extent of her powers, and they seemed smart enough to not try a full frontal assault.

"Bubbles! You're all right?" Blossom called behind her, still keeping her focus on the fiends swarming around her. "I'm okay, Blossom, but we can't keep this up! You-… We have to do something with the boys! They're the ones releasing the mutants!"

Blossom nodded, knowing her sister was watching her. She hoped that the dragoons wouldn't suddenly change target and go for her. "Good thinking, Bubbles. Just try to recover while we deal with these mutants; if Buttercup manages to defeat her ones before me tell her the same and to go for them!"

"Got it!" Bubbles responded with a hopeful tone, which was right away followed by a, "You are not going to do anything until we say so, Blossy!"

"BRICK! Stop this madness! Can't you see they're trying to KILL us!?" Blossom blurted out at the voice of her counterpart.

"Madness! This is, like, the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life! You're actually putting up an entertaining fight!"

Blossom put a hand on her forehead, exasperated, but still keeping one eye free to observe the movements of the dragoons.

"Is what those _things_ have done to Bubbles entertaining to you?" she said in an attempt to make them see the seriousness of the situation.

"Don't play with me, Pinkie. That's just ordinary for you three… or aren't you the 'Puawherpuff Giiiirls' who save Townsville every day?"

Blossom sighed. Okay, words were not going to work… then, hard way it is.

"These girls are surely one boring interlocutor when they want… seems like we have to let loose something more challenging! C'mon, Butch, what do we have here? Is there something which shoots missiles?" Brick asked eager to see more action.

"Na-ah. Methuselah apparently did not like to add these things on them apart from himself. Though there is something here that…" Butch informed as he went through the paper list they found inside the control room.

"Hey. Oh boy! Oh boy! Free this one! This one!" Boomer interjected as he climbed over Butch and began to point at random names.

"Boomer! I swear that if you do not get the heck out of my back, I will annihilate you from this planet!" Butch shouted in anger, but the two of them froze when Brick uttered, "boys… I think the _thing_ out there wants something from us…"

And right, out of the control room, attached to the glass and metal bars, there was a solitary dragoon who was staring down the three Rowdyruffs. Even Blossom noticed it from afar, as she had heard the entire conversation through the intercoms.

The dragoon crowed quietly, before opening its jaw and pouring out its breath against the boys. The gas impacted with the glass and the metal bars, reacted with the air and produced acid that instantly melted both elements. The dragoon entered the control room but its life here was brief a Butch fired a blast of heat vision at it, making it detonate.

"Huh. So that's what it looks like when they explode…" Brick commented, momentarily stunned.

"That's AWESOME!" Boomer cried in awe.

"I find more interesting the fact that out there are twenty or so of these things who're going for us…" Butch pointed out. Boomer and Brick watched outside to see an entire swarm of dragoons moving towards them.

"You know? I'm actually happy about it. Watching others fight is good but I wanna move around a bit myself, you know!"

"Yeah, let's show them who the real fighter is!" Boomer exclaimed.

"I'm good with that!" Butch agreed. Eventually, the Rowdyruff Boys bolted out of the control room and charged at the swarm of dragoons, startling the monsters. Of course, the kill count began to rise in favour of the new arrivals.

Blossom scoffed. Those boys… they were always the same. But in any case, that was one problem dealt with… now that the income of mutants was stopped, she just needed to eliminate the remaining ones.

She was surprised to see that there were only ten dragoons remaining. The rest of the swarm had moved away to join their siblings against the ruffs, apparently.

She prepared to go for the nearest one when Buttercup, out of nowhere, came into the picture roaring. She fired an eyebeam that blew up a single fiend, and then she began to zap from one beast to the other kicking and punching. Too fast for them, their weak bodies where mincemeat for Buttercup's powerful attacks, and some of them even saw their own bellies explode only because their skin was too damaged to bear the internal pressure.

The last dragoon crowed in fear and flied away. Buttercup was going to follow it when Blossom called, "Buttercup, that's enough. It won't return."

The green puff sighed and tried to calm herself down. She had visibly been in heavy battle mode. Various cuts dotted her body, sign that she had sustained some close calls in the battle with the porcupines, and sweat was all over her face. But other than that, she did not have any serious injuries, and Blossom was thankful for that.

"The hedgehog-like things… are gone for good. I don't think there-.. _*sigh*…_ there are more of them around…" Buttercup said between the breaths.

"Good. The new ones are occupied with the Rowdyruffs, so I think we're free… for now."

"What about Bubbles?"

"I'm here…"

The two of them turned to greet their blonde sister. To their dismay, her injury was still bleeding.

"I don't think I'm feeling so good..." she said, almost whispered.

"Darn! …there must be some kind of first aid kit somewhere here…" Buttercup said, she was definitely worried, "Doctor Porter must have some of them, with all those things around ready to attack anyone at sight!"

Blossom's feelings were not too much dissimilar from her sister ones… but she had one idea. It wouldn't get Bubbles in safe zone, but it would at least stop the injury from making her lose blood.

She motioned her to come near herself, and when Bubbles was near her, she carefully took her wounded arm and put it right in front of her, the wound facing her own face.

"It might hurt, just try to think to something else and bit the bullet, okay?" Blossom warned. Her sister nodded, Buttercup was already at Bubbles' side keeping her free hand in hers, so Blossom focused on her task. She inhaled deeply, then she let out a tiny, controlled gust of ice-breath. The air went over Bubbles' wound and began to freeze it slowly. Bubbles clenched her eyes shut and her lips quivered, but she didn't cry.

At last, Blossom released Bubbles' arm. The area around the wound was frozen, but it was not covered by ice. The bleeding had been stopped… for now.

"That should do for some time. Bubbles, you need to leave this place and look for help. We will stay and look for Donnie," Blossom said. It was not a question.

"…but… but Blossom, I don't want to leave!" Bubbles protested with tired words, "I… I cannot leave you two here… leave Donnie here…"

"Bubbles, there's no way you can help us. You'll get yourself injured even more… or worse!" Buttercup reasoned, "It's for the best, you have to let us finish this. We can deal with Porter!"

Bubbles sniffed. They had good reasons… but she wasn't convinced. She couldn't let them go away like that. This was Containment Farm VII, what about all the ones before number seven? And the others after it? What about Porter? If he was as strong as Blossom said, they would have had to face him together! What about the Rowdyruff Boys, as soon as they would have finished fighting the remaining mutants?

What about Donnie? Was he even alive now?

…

A cry was heard.

The Rowdyruff Boys and the dragoons stopped fighting, both sides surprised by the sudden scream… the painful, heart-wrenching scream of a boy.

"…Donnie?" Bubbles whispered, saying what was already in her sisters' minds.

The reaction was instant. There was no time to argue. Their super-hearing had proved effective: they exactly knew from what direction the cry came from and, more or less, even the distance. It wasn't far.

Blossom and Buttercup bolted together at high speed. They were so fast the auto-door they moved for had just the time to open itself for the space just enough to let them go through them. When the door finished its movement, Bubbles passed through it, determined to follow her sisters despite her current state. She wasn't letting them face Porter alone, period. She was not leaving Donnie alone, either. The Rowdyruffs eventually shrugged the scene off and resumed to slay the mutants.

Blossom and Buttercup needed twenty seconds of high speed flight to reach their target. Another automatic door, but they didn't even stop themselves to check what the label recited. They slammed themselves towards the door, which they found out was not enforced with Duranium. The expense of energy was so high they not only burst into the room launching the door away in two halves, but they also caused a pink and green explosion which ended up destroying everything near the entrance.

They did not stop their movement: they had the element of surprise, they couldn't let the chance slip from their hands. The first points of interest appearing in their vision were the forms of Mojo Jojo and Doctor Porter, both startled by their appearance.

They didn't question why Mojo was here, but went directly for the attack. Blossom charged at Mojo, starting with a punch on the face, then letting loose a flurry of kicks, in the end finishing with a powerful hook. The ape didn't even have the time to register the events as he was sent flying into a set of shelves, crushing them and their contents in the process.

Buttercup went for Doctor Porter. For the first actual time he had been taken aback and Buttercup was not going to let the chance go unused. She attacked him right away with her eyebeams even before actually reaching him, which landed a perfect headshot. Stunned, Porter was left at the mercy of the green puff: she tried to do as much damage as possible, landing powerful hits all over his body. She had no clue about a weak point, so she tried to at least do something to the robot hands: maybe if she succeeded in breaking them Porter would at least lose the abilities those things had.

At the same time, Mojo Jojo sprouted up from the debris left by his last voyage, laser rifle at hand and surprisingly not knocked out. _He's getting harder,_ Blossom noted as Mojo Jojo screeched in anger and began to fire red hot beams towards her. She responded with eyebeams of her own, but the rifle was a new model and its high rate of fire was effectively preventing her from taking a good aim at the monkey.

It was at this moment that Bubbles slowly made her appearance in the room. She gasped when she saw that Blossom and Buttercup were in combat, but she relaxed when she realized they had the situation under control… for now.

The blue puff looked around the laboratory, looking for the source of the sound that had brought the three of them here… and she found it.

_Donnie!_

She flied towards the yellow stain on the floor that was Donnie, trying to be as fast as her body could let her. It was clear that something was off.

"Donnie!" she started as she flew down and kneeled right at his side, "What happened? Are you all right?"

The little boy spent five seconds before finally making the decision to rotate his head to watch her. His face showed extreme sorrow and his eyes were red with tears, a spectacle that made Bubbles's heart go down.

"Donnie… what happened?" she repeated more quietly as the noises of the battle continue to be heard around.

Donnie opened his mouth, but the words that were let out of it were not what Bubbles hoped to hear. "I… I am… _a failure…"_

"What?"

"A failure! He's right," he said with a hard, almost angered tone, "he's freaking right! I'm just a failure and I've always been from the day I've been created!"

"What in the world are you babbling about?!" Bubbles said with surprise, but Donnie ignored her as he continued to grumble, "Porter's right… I cannot beat him, I cannot stop him… I won't be able to stop _her…"_

"Wait, wait, wait, hold on!" Bubbles ordered as she grabbed his shoulders and shook him off, "Donnie, stop thinking about it that way! You're scaring me off! I don't know what Doctor Porter has told you, but to be honest I don't care. You are not a failure!"

She put a hand under Donnie's chin and forced him to get nearer. They were really near to each other as Bubbles, her eyes fixed into his ones, said solemnly, _"You. Are. Not. A. Failure!"_

…

"Am I not?"

"You aren't!" Bubbles repeated, "Whatever bad things you've done Donnie, you weren't even yourselves! And you cannot consider acting bad something like not defeating Doctor Porter!"

"He's extremely strong, Donnie! He had managed to knock all three of us out, back when we were fighting with the Rodwyruff Boys, like it was nothing! When I heard your cry just minutes ago, you just cannot begin to realize how much worried I was about you! You should thank heavens you're alive, and you're here saying you failed? Do you realize how illogical is that?"

Donnie stared at her for some seconds… before nodding.

"Donnie, I've known you for enough time to think that you're good beyond any doubt. And what you managed to do after you returned to Ultrapolis is something you should be proud of. _Everyone_ is proud of you! Your aunt was worried when we had to leave her to go deal with the ruffs! The Mayor of Ultrapolis was extremely worried when we came to him looking for information about the Doctor! That is, because they believed in you!"

By that moment, Donnie had completely stopped to sniff and sob.

"Donnie, there no way you should consider yourself a failure. You have achieved so much, you've become the _opposite_ of it! What's a failure anyway? No living being should consider himself as such. It doesn't make sense... Even less in your case!"

She let out her right hand, making sure to keep the wounded limb hidden, and stood up as she said, "Promise me you'll never, _ever,_ have that thought cross your mind again."

At first, Donnie kept lying on the floor, motionless, as he stared at the blue puff now over him.

Was she right? He had been so sure about it… it all made sense, and Porter's words were made from logic, even if they were evil…

But she was right. Because it didn't matter that his existence had caused Porter to resume his activities in Ultrapolis… in fact, for all he knew Porter would have begun to use the city's inhabitants as test subjects, or worse. There was no way to tell what Porter's plans beyond the current scheme were. And as for his attempts to test him, he had been able to stop them. Giant lizard monster included. And of the same idea were most of the people in Ultrapolis… including the Mayor himself, known to be hard to get on the good side, and the people he had started to call family after he lost his own creator.

Bubbles was right… Bronislav was right. He, his creator, had said it himself, wrote it into the last words of his journal. He was good. Porter may have been more powerful, but he was not invincible... they had not lost yet. They had not failed yet.

He moved his right hand and grabbed Bubbles' one. "You're right. I… I'm sorry, I've been stupid… It's just that… I don't know…"

"We'll talk about it later, Donnie," she said as he helped him stand up, "now we… _you_ have to help Blossom and Buttercup!"

That brought him to the events at hand. Blossom was still trying to get nearer to Mojo, who had changed weapon to two akimbo plasma pistols, while Doctor Porter had been able to counter Buttercup for the first time and was beginning to get the upper hand.

First, though, he had to warn them about the danger of Porter's goal. "Bubbles, we have to stop Porter first. He's… he's going to do something terrible if we don't!"

He inhaled before continuing, the thought of it made his stomach ache, "…he's going to create a girl! A girl, super-powered just like me, made with the sole purpose of beating me!"

Bubbles was completely taken aback by that statement. She stumbled back, her arms trying to keep her equilibrium. "A… _girl?_ You mean like us, you, but evil?! Like, a Rowdyruff Girl?"

"I don't know, but it may be far worse than that… we cannot let that happen!"

Bubbles nodded without adding further questions, there would have been time for those _after_ they had incapacitated the new villain. "Okay; look, I cannot directly fight Mojo and Porter as of now…"

"Huh? What do you mean you cannot fight- woah!" only now Donnie had noticed what had happened to Bubbles' arm, she had tried to hide it but it only lasted for some minutes.

"Bubbles, what happened? Your arm…? This must be Blossom's work, but… you need some help!"

"I do, but my sisters do more! I'll live, now go to their aid!" Bubbles uttered with a determined face.

It was Donnie's turn to be worried now, but Bubbles' face was stoic. He knew there was no way he was going to convince her otherwise… in his current state, not in the slightest. She was the one good at discussions between the two of them.

"Okay, but try to stay away from the fight and do not attempt anything dangerous!" he said before finally turning to go help Buttercup… too bad the green puff just in that moment got a kick that sent her in a fast course towards one of the chamber's walls, colliding with it.

Doctor Porter gasped for air. He was in a bad shape: the robot left arm was slightly damaged as there were some cables hanging from it, and there were cuts all around his face and clothes. No trace of red blood, though… to be precise, there was a liquid over the injuries, but it was _yellow._

He was furious. "YOU!" he bellowed, stopping Blossom and Mojo from fighting each other, no one of the people in the room had ever seen him in such a state, "You've have made the mistake to _annoy me,_ infra-humans! You'll soon regret your foolish decision!"

That said, he rotated his body and sprinted towards Donnie and Bubbles. The blue puff squeaked in fear and began to fly backwards, while Donnie braced himself for his arrival. He was weak though… the arm was still aching from before and he was not fully recovered from his last encounter with him. He needed some help! Buttercup was momentarily out of the game, so that left…

"Porter! Watch out!" Mojo Jojo tried to warn him, but it was too late as Blossom launched a pink beam of energy from her hands towards Porter's back. The Doctor jumped off the side and the beam missed him by a few inches. The attack only resulted in making him madder.

Defeating Porter was a good first target, but there was something else they needed to take care of. Donnie quickly examined the room until he located the pot, which Mojo Jojo had quickly positioned himself in front of. They could either try to eliminate the mixture or the last ingredient needed to complete it, which was to be found somewhere in the large laboratory as Porter had said. Mojo was definitely protecting the concoction, but the second option was viable.

"Blossom!" Donnie shouted to the pink puff, "Leave him alone, you have to look for and destroy _all_ the Unidentified Y stored in this room! NOW!"

Blossom was at first surprised by this request, but the urge in Donnie's voice was clear and she decided to not question it for now. She flied upwards scanning the room with her supervision until she located that, far and fixed on one of the side walls, were hundreds of flasks of Unidentified Y. She prepared to go for it… until something exploded over her, sending her to the ground.

"Oh, no, you _don't!"_ Porter proclaimed as he retracted his Hand Cannon set to explosive shells and made it back into his robotic arm, the one still functioning, and ran after her. Before Blossom could stand up, the Doctor seized her by her neck.

"I warned you once, Blossom Utonium, and you left my warning be unheard. I won't waste more of my precious time with you," he hissed as his grip tensed up, but before he could effectively hurt her somebody attacked him from behind with a war cry.

"Leave my sister ALONE!" Buttercup shouted as he stormed him, _again,_ with a series of melee attacks.

Now free, Blossom returned to her previous task and flied upwards again. She noticed Donnie and Bubbles doing the same… that was it! If they fired with their ranged attacks all at once, there would have been no way for the villains to stop all of those at the same time!

Unfortunately there was someone who wasn't of the same idea, as Mojo Jojo changed back to the laser rifle and put an optic sight over it to aim from the long distance. He began to fire more of the deadly beams towards the three of them, distracting the two puffs and the boy from their target.

"You aren't going to save yourselves today, Powerpuff Girls… not if I, Mojo Jojo, have something to say about it!" he said to himself as he took another shot, missing Bubbles by three centimetres. He just needed to slow their progress down until Porter managed to free himself from Buttercup, who was however putting all of herself into the fight.

Before that could happen though, something entered from the door destroyed by the previous grand entrance of Blossom and Buttercup. "MOJO!" The Rowdyruff Boys shouted as they literally shoved themselves into the room, "Let's get the heck out of here! Metuselah's darn beasts are trying to _devour_ us!"

Close enough, an army of dragoons and porcupines followed the boys into the room, their beastly screeches filling the already noisy situation. And of top of it all, leading them was no other that the Chimaera itself, the same one who had managed to give the girls a piece of their mind at Laurentium's lab… no wonder the boys had found some difficult in beating the mutant army.

The successive events happened extremely fast. Mojo Jojo stopped shooting and watched the boys in surprise. Blossom, Bubbles and Donnie took the chance and fired two eyebeam rays and an energy grenade towards the Unidentified Y's shelves while the villain was distracted. Porter landed a series of hits on Buttercup and with a rotating kick sent her away from himself, before shooting a round from his Hand Cannon at Donnie's grenade and shouting at the Boys. "STOP THE RAYS! NOW!"

But the Rowdyruff Boys were no more sure about Porter's intentions towards them, if he was an enemy or not… and did not do anything. Thus, Porter managed to stop only Donnie's attack and even he, the one who believed to always have the situation under control, was only able to watch as the puffs' eyebeams reached the storage and made the entire thing explode.

"NOOOO!" Porter shrieked, his face said 'insanity' from every point of view. He ran to the storage, far from the puffs, ruffs and Mojo, and began to rummage through the remains, looking for an intact flask. But there weren't any.

Mojo Jojo opened his mouth but did not say anything, flabbergasted. He fired an angry glare towards the Rowdyruffs who, unaware of his plan, ignored him, before making some fast calculations about how to leave Porter's hideout without getting captured.

The creatures were motionless, all watching towards Porter's location. It was like they were somewhat scared by him, as right after his furious cry some of the lower monsters had even escaped back into the hallways. That and the will of the Rowdyruffs to _not_ help Porter let the Powerpuff Girls and Donnie free to hover quietly towards the Doctor.

"Porter!" Blossom announced as they got nearer to him, "it's over. You are alone against us now, you've been defeated. Surrender!"

Porter suddenly froze, stopping his useless attempts to find something usable. Then, he let out a single, evil laugh.

"You'd like it, huh? Pathetic infra-human… you have _no idea who you're messing with."_

That said, the man stood up and began to walk calmly towards the table where the pot was waiting. The girls and the boy did not stop him: Donnie was aware of the fact that without the substance Porter had no way to complete the experiment, while the girls continued to study him and keep him under their eyes. They followed him from above, ready for everything.

Halfaway, Porter started to speak, now completely devoid of anger, "Thank you for the help, Mojo Jojo. It's time that you see the result of the time spent here!"

Mojo was finding it hard to follow Porter's word now, "What are you talking about, Porter? Without the Unidentified Y or a similar catalyst, we cannot create the new superbeing!"

"Correct. We have no Unidentified Y… to be honest, I have more of it stored in other laboratories, but those are far from our current position, too much for this… complex situation," Porter explained with an ironic choice of words.

He looked at the four heroes and smiled as he said, wickedly, "But I still have an efficient catalyst. A last attempt is due."

Thus, Doctor Porter went over his damaged metal hand with the working one and did something that neither the Powerpuff Girls nor Donnie were able to catch. Whatever he did, it had the effect to release some type of pressurized gas from some areas of the artificial hand…

…then, it fell from its body, the metal clinging as it hit the floor.

The reaction of the girls was one of pure fear, and Donnie wasn't far from it… even though he was the only one who already had an idea about the cause of that, the girls had already seen something similar to that scene.

Blossom was incredulous. _He's… mutated. He's mutated, just like the monsters he created himself! … Just like… Dick Hardly!_

Porter smiled as he moved the fingers of the newly revealed mutated hand around, testing its muscles. Reptilian like scales covered it in place of normal human skin and it had what could only be described as claws. "Surprising, isn't it? I know I've not been the first one to encounter this type of… modification, but unlike _him,_ I have learned to master it. The metal addendums I've made were needed to channel my newly found power _and_ help me keep it under control while adding some additional, fun twist. But again, I digress… this is not important."

He narrowed his eyes, while the skin around them lost some of its pink colour in favour of a more greenish one, before modifying his remaining robot hand into yet another new instrument.

A blade appeared in place of the hand, its extreme sharpness clear even from a distance.

"Made out of my porcupines' spikes… not as hard as Duranium, but enough to do this," he stated matter-of-factly before making a fast, single cut on the mutated limb.

No one in the room was able to realize what Porter was doing until it was too late. Blood poured out of the cut in single drops… one of a strong yellow colour. A colour similar to red… and orange as well.

Donnie was the first one to put two and two together. He only had the time to scream, "NO!" as Porter put his injured free hand over the pot and let some drops of his own blood fall into the contents inside.

_No… no, it can't be… NO!_

Porter made some steps back, waiting for something to happen. After eight, silent seconds, the contents of the mixture reacted with each other: everything became white in the lab as a deafening sound invaded it…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More not so hidden 'Knock-It Off' references. I must say, that episode might have been the most inspiring one for me to write both 'The Perfect Little Boy' and this sequel.


	8. Birth

Everything was silent inside one of the many laboratories that were present inside Porter's hideout. The very one where a huge explosion had just taken place. The silence remained unperturbed for various seconds as no one of the people present dared to say anything and break it.

Doctor Porter stood motionless as he waited for the dust to clear away. Dazed, his mutants seemed like they weren't in the mood to fight… some of lesser ones had actually fled the place after the explosion. The Rowdyruff Boys hovered in the air with their arms crossed, waiting to understand what the heck had just happened. Mojo Jojo rubbed his hands, eager to find out how the experiment had gone.

Buttercup had no idea of what was going on, but she was smart enough to realize it was no good. Blossom had her muscles flexed, prepared for anything that may come at them. Bubbles had her mouth covered by her hands, as she prayed that what had happened in front of her didn't work.

Donnie had his mind devoid of anything. His eyes were simply fixed on the place where the pot used to be.

Slowly, the dust came away, escaping the crowded room through the rare air vents located on the top of the sidewalls. And, soon enough, the veil over the result of the experiment disappeared.

A human figure floated right over the now destroyed wooden table.

Donnie felt his throat clench when he finally saw _her._ She was a little girl, looking exactly like him, the girls or the ruffs as a base: she wore clothes vaguely similar to the Powerpuff Girls' ones. Her mary janes, though, were teal in colour instead of being black, and in place of the dress she wore a pitch black skirt and a teal coloured t-shirt.

Her eyes had teal irises, definitely her signature colour, while she wore her black, uncombed hair loose, just long enough to touch her shoulders. Her right eye was hidden in part by a rebel hair fringe.

She smiled. A smile that could have been classified without a doubt as _evil._

First sound the new arrival heard, though, wasn't a cry of fright as she expected. Instead, she heard an applause, to which she reacted by raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"Excellent! Excellent!" Doctor Porter said as he finally took the time to fix the miraculously still in one piece glasses on his eyes, "It worked!"

"What are you so happy about, four-eyes?" the new girl uttered rudely. Her voice was still girlish but something about it was off.

Porter was not surprised by her remark, he found more interesting the fact she had not spoken in Esperanto, but he continued to applaud for some additional seconds, the metal hand doing a weird sound as it impacted with the mutated one. When he finally decided to stop, he said, "So you do understand English, don't you? Very interesting indeed… it seems like language grasp is a feature proper of superior infra-humans."

"Just the few ones needed, four-eyes. You want a full showcase of how many ways I can insult you in English? 'cause that'd be a pretty long thing to do… To be honest it'd be the same in Esperanto as well. "

This time, the Doctor laughed at the behaviour of his new creation. "Oh no, thank you, I'd rather do more important things as of now. Tell me, little girl, what is your name?"

"I'm not sure about saying that to _you_ …" she answered, startling some of the occupants of the room (namely the ones who were classifiable as heroes), "but you seem to be so sure of yourself, I pity you. Name's _Decay."_

"Decay, huh? Makes sense… for you will bring nothing but bane, anguish, and _decay…_ "

"Wow, very theatrical, four-eyes," Decay interrupted, "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to beat someone to death before you kill me with your lethally boring words, and you are advised to not stand in my way!"

Porter seemed to be amused, but he still said, "Not so fast, young infra-human. I'm the one who created _you,_ and I did so with one, precise goal in mind. You'll have to fulfil a request of mine before I let you do whatever you want."

"Is that a threat? Ha! It'll take more than a dinosaur-like arm to actually frighten me! Idiot…" Decay chortled.

"But, Decay, it is in your interest to follow my words. After all, I'm sure you'll be interested in what I am going to show you…"

That said, Doctor Porter made a sign for the remaining occupants in the rooms. The new girl had failed to realize there were other people here until now, so she seemed to get quite curios as she began to examine them.

The girls' gaze firstly fell on the Rowdyruff Boys' figures. She watched them for some seconds before raising an eyebrow and telling Porter, "What, I hope you didn't expect me to find those losers interesting…"

"Who have you just called a _loser?"_ Butch cried as he tightened his fists menacingly.

"You three. _Losers._ Loooo-seeers!" Decay repeated, visibly enjoying the fact she had successfully annoyed one of the three boys.

"Oh, you find this funny? After we're done with you, we'll see who's the loser!" Boomer retorted. He was as much offended as his green-eyed brother.

While Butch and Boomer were equally disturbed by the annoying behaviour of the brat in front of them, Brick wasn't of the same idea. She found her pathetic at most with her insults, but before he could calm his two brothers down, Doctor Porter beat him on time, "No, Decay. I'm not referring to those three."

Suddenly losing interest, the teal eyed girl gave an inquisitive look around and located Mojo Jojo. She hastily commented, "Huh, a monkey. I suppose that isn't either what you have in mind four-eyes… because I can't see how an animal scratching his own back could be of any interest."

"WHAT! HOW YOU DARE, you rude little insect, to insult me, Mojo Jojo, who is far more than a simple monkey, but is in reality a much more intelligent being, smarter than anything you've ever seen or imagined, and devoted to the only cause of-"

"Mojo Jojo, please forgive the… uncontrolled behaviour of my creation," Porter said, effectively stopping the villain's rant, "but she was made to be quite a thorn on the side of whoever is around her. Not really her fault…"

Mojo Jojo gritted his teeth in anger… but remained silent. The scientist was right, even the Rowdyruffs had not gave him the best of the welcomes when he had first created them… and if this one was worse than them, it was no surprise to see some insults coming out of her mouth. He decided to settle on believing that it would be improper for him to lose his mind on such childish attempts to make him mad and motioned Porter to continue with his speech.

"But again, Decay, no. Mojo Jojo is a partner of mine, and does not have anything to do with my request, just like the Rowdyruff Boys don't. Please, take a look at the other… guests we appear to have in the room."

Following the Doctor's suggestion, Decay finally succeeded in acknowledging the presence of the four puffs, away from the other villains. Her eyes instantly showed an air of hostility as she watched them, and the heroes weren't far from it, either. While Donnie was still trying to accept the fact that she existed, the Powerpuff Girls didn't need an explanation to realize that Decay was a living danger to everyone near her.

"You four seem like the kind of guy who needs a little lesson about how to behave," Decay said, "and with 'lesson', I mean, being beaten up to _death…"_

Buttercup scoffed at the remark, "Huh, I dare you to try it! Maybe after I've finished what I have in mind, you'll change your idea…"

"You're sure you can beat me? Ha!" Decay chuckled, "I'd be surprised to see you stand for more than five seconds against me! Just look at yourselves, you are so _cute_ you make me sick…"

"Well, how about you actually close the trap and come here so that I can show you what I exactly mean?" Buttercup challenged, stomping a foot in front of her in provocation.

" _No."_

The two girls cocked their heads to the source of the interruption as Porter continued, "You are not going to fight her, Decay, nor you're going to fight any the Powerpuff Girls. My will is to test the strength of the _male_ infra-human, the one named Donnie."

The block over Donnie's mind disappeared at the mention of his own name, just in time as Decay fixed her glare over him. Donnie tried with all of his might to not show the fear that was currently beginning to increase inside him, but the _smile_ that slowly appeared over Decay's face showed that his attempts were not as effective as he hoped.

"Can I keep him after I knock him out?"

Donnie was completely taken aback. _What… what in the world…?_

"Depends on how much of him remains after the test. I cannot care about what happens next or on how you do it. You just have to defeat him in combat. You and him, _alone."_

"Works for me… Maybe we can have some _fun_ together after all of this, huh, Donnie?" Decay joked as she slowly began to march towards him. Donnie was not prepared for this. He wasn't ready… things were happening too fast!

The Powerpuff Girls however weren't of the same idea. Blossom looked at Bubbles and Buttercup and they both nodded, basically reading each other's mind, and the redhead would have put herself between Donnie and Decay… if it wasn't for the fact that someone else did it before her.

Butch landed exactly in front of the Powerpuff Girls, facing the opposite way, as he bellowed, "Wait a second, babygirl! You ain't going anywhere until you implore me for forgiveness about calling me _loser..._ or let me break every one of your bones. I'd be good with either!"

Boomer followed his brother right away as he shouted, "Yeah! No beating up until we beat you up!"

Brick put a hand over his face, exasperated by her brothers' behaviour (especially Boomer's). "Butch, Boomer, just leave her alone. She isn't worth of our time, and-"

He stopped speaking as Decay laughed. "You two are so funny. You really believe I consider you any kind of threat! Please! Your own name is so pathetic, anyway… Rowdyruff Boys? What, is that a boyband of sorts?"

Brick instantly zapped away and landed in front of his brothers, cracking the floor in the process.

" _What have you just called us?"_ he hissed, ready to move and go to the offensive. Boomer and Butch both grinned, happy to see their leader with them. The Rowdyruffs were ready again to kick butt.

But Decay wasn't dazed by the prospect of fighting the three boys. Actually, she suddenly decided she had more motives to fulfil Doctor's Porter request rather than fighting the three losers in front of her. So she decided to do the only possible thing.

Deal with the three of them in the fastest, _and most painful,_ possible way.

She stood in battle stance and taunted, "Come here and I'll repeat it for your poor little boo-boo ears…"

"You'll regret that. C'mon, boys!" Brick ordered. Butch darted forward, directly towards Decay, while Brick and Boomer flied away sidewards, a clear flanking manoeuvre. Instead of showing herself preoccupied, Decay let out a little giggle before leaving at full speed towards Butch. Her hands moved in a circle way in front of her, and before Butch knew it, he collided with an invisible force field.

 _Darn, should have known it. She's got the same powers as the dimwit,_ Brick reasoned quickly as he and Boomer continued to fly around and began to shoot eyebeams towards their adversary. Butch, on the other hand, gritted his teeth and did not let himself get stunned by the impact: he flied away at a safe distance while Decay was too much occupied in evading the attacks by his two brothers.

"What in the world is going on!?" Mojo Jojo protested, indignant, "The boys are not supposed to fight her!"

"I don't think she'd change her behaviour if I told her, Mojo Jojo," Porter said, "and I suppose the same could be said for your creations. This isn't that much of a problem, however. If everything goes as I imagine, the test will still begin soon… furthermore, this gives us some time to deal with more important matters, like… decide what to do with those four."

He raised the hand still imprisoned inside the metal and pointed a finger towards the Powerpuff Girls and Donnie, who were watching the fight with surprise.

"That was… expected. Seems like the bad guys cannot get along with each other, period," Buttercup commented.

"True, but that gives us an occasion we cannot let away. Bubbles is injured, and we are all quite weakened. As much as I hate to let someone like Doctor Porter on the loose, we have to get out of here while we can: after we have recovered, we'll return to capture and secure all of the-"

"Blossom, no."

The leader of the Powerpuff Girls nearly jumped in surprise. It was Donnie who had interrupted her.

"Donnie… for what reason would you-"

"Doctor Porter has created that... that _thing_ for one, and only one reason. _Me._ If we escape now, Porter will do anything, _anything_ , to let his new creation and me fight, probably even in Ultrapolis! I cannot let _that_ happen…"

"But…"

"No buts, Bubbles," Donnie stopped. He had regained some of his strength, as well as psyche. He now knew what needed to be done, for the safeness of his city and the few people he had started to love. "There is no other way out of this. If anything, _you_ should be the ones who have to get out of this place."

While the girls were already having a hard time following Donnie's reasoning, the last phrase had the effect to make the three of them shake their heads in unison.

"Forget that! We're not leaving you _alone_ here!" Buttercup stated.

"We're the Powerpuff Girls! We do not leave _anyone_ behind!" Blossom continued.

"Even more if he's both a colleague and a _friend_ of us!" Bubbles finished.

And Donnie, yet again, despite the situation, couldn't help but smile. Those three girls continued to surprise him, even after all the time they had spent together.

They didn't have the chance to continue arguing as an explosion detonated. They turned towards the battle only to see Boomer a few meters away, his head planted in the floor and the legs sticking out. Butch was in another part of the laboratory, lying on the floor, apparently knocked out. Brick was the only one of the ruffs still up and fighting, but Decay wasn't leaving him the time to breathe.

The leader of the Rowdyruff Boys was fighting with all of his might, but Decay seemed to be anticipating every single one of his attacks. Angered for how the fight was going, Brick dared a more intrepid attack, lunging forward with a kick, but Decay not only easily avoided the attack, but took the initiative and grabbed the boy's leg, then she swung Brick around like a sling. She, however, had not the chance to effectively throw him at a near set of machines as a dark blue energy blast hit her in the back, sending her away.

Boomer arrived ready to help his brother out, but the redhead didn't need his hand to stand and send the worst of his glares towards the teal eyed girl. Decay watched her back and realized that Butch, who had already managed to recover, was at the other side, ready to attack. She was surrounded.

"Congratulations, babygirl, you've successfully made us mad. Now face the consequences," Brick threatened as he punched a fist into his other hand.

Due to the previous fight, Decay's had her hair all around her face, covering her eyes. She moved one of her hands over them, to let just the left eye see without any obstacles. Inside it was something far different from fright and more comparable to bloodthirst.

"You either," she simply hissed before zapping at full speed towards Brick and Boomer. The two of them flied on opposite directions, but Decay didn't give them any time to breath. She followed Boomer _while_ bombarding Brick with a series of teal-coloured energy grenades, which she stopped doing only when she reached the blonde ruff and engaged him in close combat.

Butch would have come to Boomer's aid if it wasn't for the fact that, before he could move of a single centimetre, the Chimaera leaped in and crashed on the floor right in front of him. Around him, a pack of porcupines closed every way of escape. All the mutants screeched in hostility before attacking the green ruff altogether.

"Hmmm… interesting. The mutants have always been keen to act like a pack of sorts: it seems like they're trying to _help_ my design of infra-human, like they consider her part of their group," Doctor Porter noted as he scanned the battles going on.

Mojo Jojo was silent. Someway, the fight wasn't totally leaving him unperturbed like he expected. Yeah, he was one of the evilest geniuses that had ever appeared on the globe, but still… he couldn't say he was completely unmoved by the scenes visible in front of him. Boomer was having a bad time keeping Decay at bay. Butch was trying not to get devoured by the Chimaera while at the same time evading the spikes thrown at him by the lower mutants, and Brick had found himself blocked by a swarm of dragoons.

Realizing how this was very unlikely for him, Mojo shooed the useless thought away and said in response to Porter's previous statement, "I don't care. My only real preoccupation by now is to see the Powerpuff Girls and their new ally finally in their personal grave by the end of the day!"

"It will happen, my friend… It will happen," Porter reassured, "I can already see we're getting to the end of this preliminary of sorts."

 _Where the heck is Butch?!,_ Brick thought as he flied downwards, avoiding being burnt over by the hot breath of a dragoon. Darn mutants, why weren't they returning to their nests or something like that? The dragoons were not a real threat, but the fact was that there was an entire swarm buzzing around him, which balanced the fight and made Brick spend more energy that he would have wanted.

He needed to reach Boomer. A bad feeling had begun to make its way over to its mind, and he had suddenly felt the need to make sure it was just himself and not a real-

A powerful hit emitted a terrible sound, as Brick heard the sound of his brother wheezing to the impact.

Boomer had made a single mistake. Mistake that let the girl he was fighting with have the opening she needed. As Boomer gasped due to the momentary lack of air in his lungs, Decay smirked.

Brick had only the time to get a glimpse of this scene as the nth dragoon flied in front of him and crowed. "Get out of my way!" he shouted before firing an eyebeam towards the creature, too near for it to escape. The beam pierced easily through the mutant's body, but Brick did not have the time to wait for it to explode.

He flied right through it, ignoring the heat, the acid drops falling over his body along with the mutant body parts, and sprinted for Boomer, only to find three additional dragoons waiting for him on the other side. They were simply too much: he couldn't ram into them because of the dangerous gas hidden inside them, but trying to destroy them was to no avail due to their numbers.

Butch was currently in an even direr situation as he struggled with both legs and arms to keep the Chimaera's jaw open and prevent it from chewing him down. Decay, on the other hand, had already knocked down Boomer and was by now kicking the heck out of his body. Over and over again.

The Rowdyruff Boys were having a bad time. And the first one to realize how this was real was Bubbles. Until that moment, the girls and their friend had stared at the battle, unsure of what to do, considering that those fighting were all their enemies, but Bubbles now knew what needed to be done.

"Guys… we need to do something… to, uh… help them…" she said, timidly at first.

"Huh?" Buttercup said incredulously, "Bubbles, did I hear that right? Are you suggesting, like… to help the rowdyruffs?"

"Yes! They may be our enemies, but we cannot just let them get hurt like that, or… or worse!" Bubbles tone was firm now, it was clear it would have been hard to convince her otherwise.

"Bubbles," Blossom continued, "do I have to remind you how the boys have been 'kind' to us when we have encountered them during the last years? I don't think they'd actually help us in a similar situation, and they are still our enemies!"

"I don't care! We're different from them, Blossom, and staying there without helping them is wrong!"

Donnie thought over the argue… and ended up agreeing with Bubbles' reasoning. Yeah, he hadn't encountered the boys before, or at least before today, and he didn't know how much those three had been a problem for the girls, but Bubbles was right. They were different from them. They couldn't just stand there and let them get killed.

And he had another reason to agree on helping the Rowdyruffs, which did not have anything to do with heroism and hoped it to be able to convince both Blossom and Buttercup.

"Listen, girls, Bubbles is right, but I think it's also an advantage for us. If we let the fight go on, we may have to fight Decay _and_ the mutants together. It's clear that both are now an enemy of the Rowdyruff Boys… so, I think that a temporary alliance can be achieved."

Blossom was quite surprised by Donnie's advice. She ended up saying, "From what time have you been so good at making plans?"

Donnie winked at her before answering, "I've learned from the best one at it."

The pink eyed girl sighed in defeat before admitting, "Okay, you're right… Bubbles is right, too. It wouldn't be the Powerpuff way, to not go and give a hand to the boys. It's sealed."

"Wait, wait, wait! You're not really going to go help the Rowdyruff Boys, are you?"

The three glares that Buttercup received were tell-tale about the answer. "Oh man…" Buttercup groaned, even though he didn't argue afterwards.

"Okay. Girls, I'm going to go help the blonde one. You three go and help the other two with the mutants," Donnie said.

"Hey, slow down, leader boy!" Blossom protested, "We have to split up, alright, but letting you going alone against Decay is not an op-"

"No, Blossom. It's the _only_ option."

Donnie looked around and found out Doctor Porter was watching him. Despite his body randomly twitching every minute or so now, most probably a symptom of the lack of one of his metal appendages, he was still able to keep an eye on him. The yellow puff knew what Porter was thinking of right now.

" _I cannot care about what happens next or on how you do it. You just have to defeat him in combat."_

" _You and him… Alone."_

"…you have to trust me. No time to explain!" Donnie simply finished.

Blossom knew that every straw of experience told her otherwise… but Donnie's eyes were pleading her. Whatever the kid had in mind, it was enough important to make him decide to face the newly created ruff girl alone. It didn't look like she could stop him after all...

She just hoped that he knew what he was doing.

"All right, Donnie, but we cannot… hey!" Donnie was already on the move, flying towards Boomer and Decay.

She sighed before continuing on, "Okay… Girls, I'm going for Brick. Buttercup, you go to Butch's help, try to make sure that bigger monster there doesn't annoy us anymore in the future, okay?"

"As much as I hate just the idea to help Butch, I can do with showing that mutant there how it's done!" Buttercup confirmed before dashing in a green streak in the direction of the Chimaera's form.

"Bubbles, I didn't forget you're injured. But I know you don't want to just escape… and I understand. Still, stay behind and out of danger and come to help us only when you see there's something wrong, all right? I don't want you to be more injured than you need!"

Bubbles nodded vigorously, content to have her sister at least acknowledge her will to help out, and she stayed, for the moment, immobile as Blossom flied in the air and went through the laboratory in search of Brick.

* * *

The Chimaera felt a disturbance in the air and deconcentrated on trying to swallow his current prey in order to control the possible hazard coming towards it. However, its sixth sense, while impressive, was still too slow for powerpuff speed, so Buttercup didn't actually have to do anything different from directing a powerful kick into the creature's face.

"Nice to see you again!" Buttercup taunted at Butch before following in with two powerful punches. The pain effectively made the creature wail, thus giving Butch an escape route the green ruff did not let be unused. The two reunited as the Chimaera retreated in order to get some time to understand if its jaws were still in one piece.

"What the heck are you doing, Butters?" Butch asked, gratitude apparently wasn't in his head right now.

Buttercup thought over it a second before replying with a retort different from a simple insult, "What, isn't it obvious? I'm saving your butt!"

"Humph! I don't need any help, especially not _yours!"_

"Well, I heard someone scream before while he was being chewed by a giant mutant, was I mistaken?"

"I'd like to see _you_ being chewed by a giant mutant!"

"I for sure wouldn't have screamed like you-"

"CUT IT OFF YOU TWO!" came the unexpected interruption in the form of Bubbles Utonium, "or do you want to be sliced to bits by that monster over there!?"

Shocked, Butch and Buttercup stared at the blue puff momentarily without a word. Soon, her words proved true as the Chimaera attacked again, swinging both reptilian claws and bird-like talons. Buttercup and Butch avoided the attacks at the last seconds, and the creature would have continued to pursue them if it wasn't for Bubbles, who released a sonic scream able to momentarily repel the mutant.

Butch and Buttercup were again in front of each other. A born fighter glared at the other one for some intense seconds… before Buttercup finally broke the ice.

"Truce?" she asked before offering her hand.

"Truce," Butch answered, shaking the girls' hand, "but only until that overgrown lizard-bird-thing is down!"

"Agreed. Little doggy here needs a lesson about who's the boss!"

And then, Buttercup and Butch bolted together, a beam half light green, half dark green, coloured in a spiral-like fashion, heading right for the Chimaera's location. At the sight, the few porcupines remaining screeched in fright and scattered around.

…and the giant mutant somehow knew that it was in deep trouble now.

* * *

Brick had had it of this situation. There were a lot of reasons he was upset right now… and on top of it all now, his hat had been almost reduced to ash by the last dragoon that had tried to attack him. Just like some areas of his skin…

Darn those flying insects… little bastards easy to be taken out, until you didn't have to fight ten of them at the same time, alone. If he survived this, he would make Doctor Porter's eat his own glasses.

Brick gritted his teeth and flied backwards, just in time to evade the gas wave released at him by a dragoon. Right now, he was surrounded by six of the creatures, and those seemed like they were preparing a coordinated attack.

Until that moment, Brick had been forced to escape, avoid and repeat, but that had tactic had to end. The dragoons had pushed him far away from the locations of Butch and Boomer, and he knew their situation wasn't the best currently.

His eyes began to radiate red light as he prepared to make the six dragoons explode in a chain reaction with an eyebeam. The preparation, however, proved to be unnecessary.

Brick blinked, then gaped as he watched the dragoons, now encased in six solid blocks of ice, follow gravity and fall at nine dot eight meters per square second towards the ground. He observed the blocks (and the creature's trapped inside) crash and crumble apart, before giving a glance to the obvious responsible of the event.

"Well, so much for the help, if that was an attempt to do so," Brick shrugged off, crossing his arms.

"What? You wanted me to light them up like you were going to do? Thus causing an explosion that would have hit you full force and from all directions?" Blossom asked, a smirk on her face.

"Bah, it was going to work anyway…"

"You're welcome, Brick."

The two leaders didn't have the chance to continue jabbing at each other as the rest of the dragoons' swarm came towards them.

"Now, I'm sure you realize those things want to burn _both_ of us…" Blossom began.

"Really? To be honest, seeing a well-cooked version of you might be something I'd look forward to."

"Brick…"

"All right, all right, I understand. Let's just destroy enough of these insects to let us reach and regroup with the others."

"Exactly what I had in mind."

The reds braced themselves, and waited for the last moment, right an instant before the front line of the new swarm opened their jaws. Blossom and Brick flied down, and then began to go through the swarm itself, combining the eyebeam attacks of both to create a somewhat safe pathway through the mutant formation. The creatures were trying to slow them down, but in doing so were beginning to get in each other's way, thus giving both Powerpuff Girl and Rowdyruff Boy easy targets and opportunities to cause chain reactions and do multi-kills at ease.

The final result obtained by Blossom and Brick was the complete obliteration of three quarters of the swarm, while the last quarter fled away in retreat.

"Why weren't those that easy to fight before?" Brick grunted, still flying to reach the other side of the laboratory along with Blossom. The place was really getting more and more destroyed as the minutes passed, the ground was by now considerable a plain of debris of all sorts.

"Because now there's someone actually good at doing that at your side?" Blossom taunted.

"Yeah right. How about you get-" Brick's new insult was left unfinished as a giant object flied towards them, effectively making the two of them divert trajectories. They soon recognized the object as no other than the battered body of the Chimaera, sent away flying by the combined strength of the greens.

The creature stubbornly stood up and prepared to roar in anger, but it stopped before actually doing so as it suddenly noticed there were now five puffs to fight with now, while he was in a weakened state for sure. Thus, the monster decided to go for the coward way, whirled its body and made a beeline for the destroyed metal door of the lab, disappearing in the darkness ahead.

"I really hope it's not going to return soon, I'm literally sick of seeing that thing by now…" Buttercup complained.

"Strange enough, but I must say I agree," Butch added.

"I have a feeling that's not going to be the case…" Bubbles thought out loud.

"If it returns, we're going to stop it again, together," Blossom declared.

"But until that moment, we're not working together again. C'mon Butch, let's go help Boomer," Brick ordered, as he didn't look forward to be ally with the puffs for more than needed.

Brick and Butch, however, didn't have to do much to complete their next goal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the sudden interruption of the chapter, but I wanted to maintain a decent flow for the next one and decided to move the part about Donnie and Boomer to it. Also, next chapter is the one which is probably getting divided in two parts due to length, and in case I end up doing that I still plan to publish those together.
> 
> Notice that Decay does not share Bubbles' special power of language knowledge. Bubbles is able to basically talk to every living being (animals for sure as seen in the show itself, I think every human language does apply as long as there are people who speak it in the world). Decay has a birth language just like Donnie, Esperanto, but she's already able to talk fluently some additional languages as a result of the balance of the recipe used by Porter… and maybe something else (spoilers).


	9. Duel, Part One

Boomer spitted out the dust that he had inadvertently swallowed during his last and very personal date with the concrete floor. Then, he licked the red trail that was coming out of his mouth before standing up and turning to face the darn girl who was making him have a very bad time.

She was still smiling; with that hateful, wicked smile who Boomer found more annoying than ever. He wanted so much to cancel that smile from her face… or cancel the face itself if possible. His attempts at doing so during the last minutes, however, had been ineffective.

Decay was powerful, that was true no matter how he looked at it. She owned the exact same powers as the European sissy friend of the Powerpuffs, if not more; she fought with a style similar to Donnie's one, yet different in enough ways to make her unpredictable, and she didn't seem to show any sign of fatigue or exhaustion.

He still wasn't surrendering. While Brick and Butch mostly thought of him as the weaker one, he would have preferred to be beaten up until there was nothing left of him rather than surrendering. It was true when he fought his brothers over something mundane; it was true when he fought the Powerpuff Girls.

And it was especially true now.

"Still breathing?" Decay said, that horrendous smile still there, "How cute of you! I'm almost sorry that this time I'll have to make you feel real pain!"

Boomer didn't answer, or at least he didn't do so with words. The eyebeams he shot at her were a good enough answer, anyway. But Decay someway expected this as well, and the two rays hit nothing but the umpteenth protective force field.

The blast produced some smoke, from which Decay emerged at full speed, taking Boomer aback. She seized him by the neck effortlessly, and while trying to break free Boomer realized that his attempts were being useless. He was too much weakened now, he needed some time to recover, just a few breaths…

Unfortunately, he didn't have time… not even a second was available.

Decay eyed the struggling boy before announcing "That's all you can do now? Boooring! I hate boring things... Time to _end_ you!"

She charged up something on her right hand. Boomer was finally beginning to feel something comparable to fear, but luckily the emotion failed to take control of him as an unknown force shoved the girl away from him.

The blue ruff fell to the ground and immediately began coughing, refilling his lungs with good air (deep mine stale air to be precise, but better than nothing). After five seconds, he finally succeeded in giving a glance to whoever had come to help him.

He expected one of the Powerpuffs, maybe Bubbles with one of her annoying smiles she often exhibited when talking to him.

He expected Brick or Butch, both surely ready to pick at him for his failure at keeping 'babygirl' at bay.

He did not expect Donnie.

The yellow eyed boy stared at him for a second before saying, "Go". Just a single word, but meaningful. Fighting the urge to protest, Boomer forced himself to his feet and floated away, immediately locating where his brothers and the other puffs were. He was not retreating! Just the time needed to regain control of his arms… those punches from that girl hurt, give him a break!

He arrived to meet them just in time to hear, "…c'mon Butch, let's go help Boomer," to which he replied, "No need to, Brick…"

Both his brothers were momentarily surprised by his sudden appearance, reaction to which the Powerpuff Girls couldn't help but giggle a little bit.

"What are you three laughing about?" Butch demanded.

"Oh, nothing, nothing…" Buttercup answered with a face that said everything but that.

"Bah. I'd like to see this period of 'working together' end soon… and I don't see any motive to make it any longer than it already is," Brick said.

"Nothing against it, Brick," Blossom agreed. They might have been forced to be allies by the events, but those were still the Rowdyruff Boys they were talking about here. She wasn't going to give them any trust, period.

"Guys, sorry for interrupting your diplomacy thingy, but you might want to see this…" Bubbles said.

The full team of six superpowered kids watched in silence as Donnie waited for his foe and most probably new arch-enemy to free herself from the bunch of debris she was currently buried under.

"Do you think we should help him?" Bubbles asked.

"I don't know… He did say that he wanted us to keep away from her and let him deal with her," Blossom reasoned. He needed to decide what to do in any case: leaving Donnie alone might have been a bad idea, but what did he fear when he told them not to intervene?

She had a little hypothesis about it… which had something to do with a certain mad and half-mutated scientist.

"I don't care about what the dimwit said," Butch interjected, gaining glares from the Powerpuffs, "I just want to get babygirl to cry on the floor in defeat!"

"Butch, wait a second," Brick's tone was thoughtful, "I want as much as you to remind that girl of how crossing the Rowdyruff Boys' path is a bad idea, but staying here and watch her and the puff's new best friend fight might not be that stupid. Let's see what those two got in their sleeves… We might learn something useful to beat both later."

The girls were not happy that Brick implied fighting Donnie as well as Decay, but they stayed silent and focused on the duel that was about to take place. Boomer still felt some aches around his body, thus he kept his mouth shut as well. Butch gritted his teeth, but even he didn't discuss any further. He wanted to fight, not to argue… especially not with his brother who at the moment wasn't in the best of his moods. He resigned himself to wait a little bit longer than he wanted.

Porter acknowledged the fact that the infra-humans for now were going to keep themselves to the bystander role. Mojo Jojo was no more at his side, the ape had apparently something in his mind to try to deal with the Powerpuffs and had left for the shadows that now invaded various areas of the large room, as most of the lights had been damaged in the previous fights, but he didn't mind. As much as it was temporary, the last real obstacle had been removed.

Now, the test he had longed for could finally begin.

* * *

Donnie's wait ended when Decay finally freed herself from the remnants of a section of the lab's sidewalls… or to be more precise, she _exploded_ out of them.

She slowed her flight down while hovering towards the ground, finally landing just ten meters away from Donnie. She once again freed her left eye from her rebellious hair, then she stood motionless, staring at him. The boy exchanged the glance without flinching, the fright he had felt previously was gone.

For half a minute, there were no sounds heard, except for some lone laments coming from the mutants roaming around the hallways far away.

"You are so _cute_ …" Decay suddenly said, following with an awkward little giggle. Donnie's face remained as stoic as ever.

"I'm not falling for that. You are a living danger, for every possible person I can think of! I cannot let you go loose… _Decay._ I'm going to stop you, whatever the cost is!"

"Ohh, so heroic for you to say… charming! If you really say so, I believe you…" Decay said with a suddenly unsecure tone who would have been more proper to a shy little girl. She moved one of her feet forward and scratched the floor with the tip of her shoe, improving the scene even more.

She gave a little glance to Donnie before whispering, just enough for the boy to hear, _"…but you'll have to catch me first…"_

Donnie waited for five seconds, the time needed to prepare himself mentally. Then, he zapped towards Decay, fists ready to strike. The girl instantly stopped to pretend and went in full battle mode as well: when the boy reached her, she easily parried the first punches thrown at her. Then, it all became a blur as Donnie and Decay began attacking each other at speeds rarely seen by the occupants of the room, which is saying something given the current occupants included the Powerpuffs and the Rowdyruffs.

Punches, kicks, every possible melee attack was used from one of the duellers to gain the upper hand on the enemy, along with the occasional appearance of force fields, and for some long seconds the battle remained even, the two of them acting like they were the mirror reflection of the other. Then, in an attempt to break the stalemate, Donnie quickly created a force field and moved forward with the shield up, trying to run over his foe. But Decay had already had a similar idea and did the same to counter his move, resulting in having the two immaterial shields collide with each other.

The two of them were now separated only by the thickness of their own force fields, five centimetres at most. Donnie and Decay remained were they were for three seconds, staring into each other's eye. Then, the boy dashed away in retreat, just a moment before the force fields disappeared from reality.

Decay flied upwards and began to charge up teal-coloured energy grenades. Donnie frowned before doing the same with his yellow orbs, and for a minute the two of them flied around in a zig-zag pattern, throwing grenades at each other. They were however too fast to be actually damaged by them, and the controllable detonation trick didn't work since they both owned it and therefore knew how to avoid the hazard.

Suddenly, Decay changed her movement direction and flied towards another part of the laboratory, away from Donnie. The boy immediately went for the pursuit, following the bright teal streak the girl left behind her, but she had already managed to get some distance between them. Soon, the escaping teal ruff began to move in a random way, getting into an area of the large laboratory were the damage was more serious and the hiding places were high in number. It took her only half a minute to effectively lose her pursuer.

After flying for some additional seconds around, Donnie moved upwards and scanned the area around him. Yet, Decay was still nowhere to be found. _How in the world has she disappeared? Darn, I can't believe I lost her. Is she that fast?_

He closed his eyes and focused his full attention on his hearing. He began to hear more distinctively sounds that were not audible before… Various footsteps approaching and moaning sounds, surely a new group of mutants was approaching… The dull noise of the air conditioning system…

The light _swish_ of something closing in behind him…

Instead of turning to control the source of the noise, Donnie sprinted forward instinctively. He had an idea about _what_ was emitting the peculiar noise, and if his theory was true, he sure would not have wanted to be near it.

Even so, he had been too slow. The stealth grenade once again proved to be effective at being 'stealth', whoever the user was, and the light-blue oval detonated five human steps or so away from Donnie. The explosion was far more powerful than the one of regular energy grenades, and the shockwave hit Donnie full force.

Dazzled by the light, Donnie didn't even try to slow himself down but limited himself to protect his body from the sheer heat of the energy expulsed by the grenade with his arms. Therefore, leaving himself vulnerable.

Decay swooped down like a hawk on a rabbit, and Donnie wasn't even aware of her when the first fist reached his face. Then, Decay went around her stunned foe, now not more dangerous than a training dummy, and followed up with a powerful kick right on Donnie's back.

The Powerpuffs and the Rowdyruffs were still all able to effectively watch the fight even from their distance thanks to their supervision, and at the last hit they all somehow felt a shiver running down their spines.

Bubbles put a hand over her mouth and left out a little squeal she couldn't stop. Boomer gulped and made a long breath: he had the impression he had managed to feel that hit himself.

Porter's creation wasn't finished yet. Smiling, Decay kicked Donnie again, this time sending him flying towards another set of machines which had managed to survive the past fights. There was in particular a stasis cell where a 'failed mutant' was stationed, which Donnie crashed into.

He still wasn't knocked down. Fighting both the immense pain on his back and the nausea given by the liquid of the cell and the random body parts littering around, Donnie flied away from the remains only to find out Decay was already there, waiting for him with a punch ready to strike.

_I need some time to breathe! She is_ _**too** _ _fast!_

Parrying one attack after the other, Donnie decided to recover to extreme measures. He charged up a yellow orb on his right hand, _while_ using the left one to continue keeping the teal ruff at bay. Then, he went for a punch with the grenade still on his hand, one that Decay easily blocked.

He expected that.

Decay managed to raise an interrogative eyebrow before seeing the thing explode in front of both their faces, sending them flying in opposite directions. Donnie recovered in mid-air and finally gained some precious seconds of pause as Decay did the same but did not sprint right away towards him.

Buttercup scoffed to her counterpart, who seemed to be enjoying the show given the shakes of his body, unlike her. If she knew anything about fighting, that last move from Donnie meant that the battle was not going well for him.

"Hehe… Nice move, hottie. _My turn!"_

Decay didn't move to attack him… but what she did was not something Donnie thought was possible.

She charged up what seemed to be common energy grenades, on both hands… but soon Donnie understood that they weren't. Too big and too bright, their light soon gained intensity, an amount able to light up a good portion of the chamber. Decay was in visible struggle, but her smile was still plastered on her face.

She moved her hands over her head, and the two spheres fused into a bigger one, which started to even have lightning bolts zap around it. The sphere left Decay's hands… by itself.

The sphere moved a meter away from its creator before stopping and emitting what seemed to be a pure energy-made support shaft, even though the contraption as a whole was still floating in the air. Before Donnie could fathom what the heck that thing was, a laser-like blast was fired from it.

He barely managed to evade the ray, which finished its travel on a nearby wall with a loud explosion. But it was only the beginning: the previously mentioned sphere started to fire rays at machine-gun-rate at Donnie, who found himself with the need to fly fast and without slowing down to prevent the rays from annihilating his head.

His flight was however stopped by the appearance of Decay herself, who attacked with a haymaker. Donnie avoided easily her fist, but to do so he had to reduce his speed… too much. The Energy Turret fired yet another ray which this time hit its target dead centre.

Brick had a scowl on his face while all of this happened, which continued to remain unmodified even when Donnie was flung away from the turret's blast, event promptly followed by another series of teal coloured energy rays. He wasn't very preoccupied for the twit himself, he'd survive… He was more surprised than he would have wanted to be about that _thing_ that was acting like it was completely independent, as it continued to shoot the yellow puff even after this one landed on the ground not so softly.

What kind of powers had 'babygirl' still in store that they didn't know?

His thoughts were abruptly stopped by the high-pitched and most annoying (for him) voice of the other redhead in the group. "That's it, we've seen enough. Girls, time to move out and put an end to this madness!"

Buttercup and Bubbles both nodded and the three of them hovered in the air… then Blossom halted, slowly turned her head and glared at Brick. Who didn't even flinch.

"…so?"

"What, Blossy, do you expect us to come to your aid?" Brick answered, still scowling, "We may share some common enemies like that girl and Methuselah, but right now there isn't a single reason that'll make us _help_ you and your sissy friend out there. We've helped each other until it was necessary: now, that time has ended."

Blossom narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth with the intention to argue… then she changed her idea and simply replied, "FINE! We're going to do it ourselves… and here I thought you'd actually be helpful for once."

As the girls left them to themselves, Brick was no more interested in whatever was happening in the lab. His main goal now was to get the heck out of here, _without_ encountering more of those darn mutants.

"Brick, I'm sorry but I can't help but ask, are you-" Boomer's phrase went unfinished as a slap silenced him. "Boomer, stop being an idiot! We're not helping the puffs or the dimwit. They're the heroes anyway, they will come out of whatever isn't _us_ , and for today we've done enough."

While Butch was probably the only one out of the three that would have gladly stayed to break some additional heads, he agreed to an extent to Brick's speech. He gave a glance to a pair of serious cuts on his arm, courtesy of the eagle-lizard abomination, and simply nodded.

Boomer would have wanted to discuss a bit more (not about helping the puffs, mind you, about Brick still hitting him after all that happened that day), but he had not the chance to talk more as something ran over him. But it was neither a projectile nor a metal or rock piece.

It was a momentarily knocked out Buttercup, who by now lied over a stunned Boomer. Brick and Butch, both of them startled, turned back towards the area where Decay and Donnie were fighting.

Blossom and Bubbles floated in the air, steadily, as Doctor Porter in person blocked their path, the right arm already transformed into his Hand Cannon.

The arm modified itself again to turn back into the robot hand, while Porter stated, "You are _not_ going to stop my test, Powerpuff Girls. I may have worked on this one for a very limited amount of time, but _this moment,_ I've waited years for it to come!"

Porter put himself in battle stance, both the mutant hand and the robotic one closing into fists, as he finished, "You aren't going to ruin this moment of mine. Listen to my words… Dare to move of another centimetre towards Donnie and Decay, and I will _eradicate_ your irritating existence!"

Blossom and Bubbles were not afraid of him, not at all. He might have been strong… but what importance that had? If that mattered, they had fought far stronger giant monsters, not to mention the personification of Evil himself.

Donnie wasn't even visible at the moment. The turret had finally stopped to shoot its rays, collapsing onto itself and vanishing, but Decay had bombarded its supposed location with additional energy grenades. The teal eyed girl now waited in the air with a huge grin, ready to take on him as soon as he flied away from the smoke her attacks had resulted in. If he ever managed to do it.

He was in trouble.

And Doctor Porter was standing in their way.

Therefore, Doctor Porter needed to be _defeated._

Porter frowned when he saw Blossom and Bubbles glare back at him with blood-freezing eyes. Even the blonde was somewhat menacing despite the injury on her arm, of which the ice-made bandage was eventually starting to melt. Soon they were joined by Buttercup, after she quickly said an awkward 'sorry' to the blue-eyed shocked ruff she found herself lying on, and she mimicked her sisters.

He'd hoped that the infra-humans would have listened to him. After all, he was right, and to him it would have been perfectly logical for them to escape. Furthermore, he would have gladly accepted a solution that ruled the fighting out, which Porter didn't like that much. But it seemed like these 'Powerpuff Girls' were more mentally deficient than he had previously imagined.

 _Well, the decision is theirs,_ he thought as he focused and waited for the girls to make the first move.

Boomer, Butch and Brick were dumbfounded and for a moment stayed immobile, staring at their counterparts and the mutated scientist. Only the noise of steps behind them was able to free them from their trance.

"What are you waiting for, boys? This is your chance!"

The Rowdyruff Boys turned towards Mojo Jojo, who was totally expecting them to say 'yeah!'…

Except they didn't.

"Boys, boys, can't you see it! The Powerpuff Girls are distracted; they have their backs turned to you! This is your chance to strike, more so if Doctor Porter is going to help you do so!"

"Forget it, Mojo!"

Mojo Jojo at first thought he had heard it wrong.

"We're not going to fight the Powerpuff Girls anymore today. Especially not if that means helping that freak you love to consider your ally!" Brick affirmed.

"As well as his jerk of a daughter!" Boomer threw in.

"…and most of all his darn mutants!" Butch completed.

"What in the world is going on in your heads?" Mojo bellowed in anger, forgetting about his previous idea to go unnoticed, "how can you not see the bigger picture, the possibility to take out the Powerpuff Girls once for all?"

"We aren't interested in it. We fight them when we like to… And by now we don't. I'd rather beat the heck out of Methuselah to be honest!" Brick's tone was firm. He wasn't changing his idea, and neither were his brothers.

For a second, Mojo Jojo seemed like he was going to explode, judging from the glare he fired at the Rowdyruffs. Then, he made a long breath, before replying calmly, "So be it. After all, why should I, Mojo Jojo, continue to waste my precious time listening to your bickering?"

Boomer was confused. Butch was bored. Brick was uninterested.

The primate went on, "If you three are that scared and weak to march along with me towards world domination, you're free to go and waste time as you usually do… The lack of your help won't stop me!"

That said, he drew out his laser rifle, charged the weapon up, and retreated back in the shadows, no doubt in wait for the right moment to attack the Powerpuffs.

"Mojo is so pathetic sometimes… C'mon boys, let's go before-…"

Brick silenced himself when he saw what was blocking their way out.

The Chimaera. Again.

With a swarm of various mutants with it. Again.

All eager to devour them. _Again._

This time though, the Rowdyruff Boys knew what they were going against. They were taken aback before, but now they had a good knowledge of their enemy. And most of all, they had managed to defeat them, even though that had been with the help of the girls.

But most of all, the Rowdyruff Boys were _sick._ They utterly had had it with the creatures.

"THAT'S IT!" the Rowdyruff Boys shouted angrily before charging together the mutants' group full frontal in a red, dark green and dark blue rotating drill.

The Chimaera, while able to regenerate certain parts of its body and cure its injuries to an extent, was still weakened by now compared to its standard state and had come back only by the call of its predatory instincts and after retrieving a few additional mutants to help it out. And now the creature suddenly felt like of all the body parts it was composed of, maybe the brain wasn't working very well.

* * *

_Am I dead?_

Donnie wasn't sure what the answer to that question was. Or, at least, he continued to be oblivious until he began to feel the pain again.

_Unfortunately, not._

He forced himself to open his eyes, only to see nothing but smoke in front of his eyelids. He coughed the dust away before sitting up and giving a look at his current conditions.

Burns were all around his body, there was one which hurt like nothing else before on his chest. He also smelt the odour of burnt hair, and he feared that it was his. Aches from his limbs were tell-tale on the presence of bruises courtesy of his adversary.

_I've been better… But I cannot stop. Not now._

Donnie stood up, ignoring his weakened state, prepared his fists, and waited for

the smoke cloud to clear itself out. Event that came soon enough…

And soon enough, the silhouette of his opponent came into his view. To which he only reacted by tensing up his muscles even more.

"By golly, you seem like you can actually stand some hits!" Decay said, persisting with her cursed smile, "I might actually have to do some real work to take you down…"

Donnie remained silent, response that left Decay unamused. "What, nothing to say? Too bad, I was just thinking about cutting your vocal chords!"

And the threat was soon followed by action. Decay darted forward, ready to strike again, and Donnie braced himself…

…only to have himself distracted. He heard the laments of mutants getting their butt kicked, which was not too much interesting. The darn monsters had returned, but he knew the Powerpuff Girls could take on them easily, and even the Rowdyruffs could help out since they exactly weren't friends with the monsters. It might even have been them fighting Porter's creations.

But the problem was really Porter himself as when Donnie's eyes moved for the fraction of a second away from his foe he saw the Powerpuff Girls' trails move in the air, with the form of Porter in the centre.


	10. Duel, Part Two

Doctor Porter narrowed his eyes as he saw the pink and green puffs fly above him and begin to bombard him with heat vision blasts. The same did the blue one, though at a safe distance, away from him... but not by much.

_The infra-humans are trying to end this safely… they don't want to fight head on, they fear that tactic. Smart for them, indeed… Time to switch to direct attack myself then!_

While he easily evaded the red rays coming to him, Porter modified the robot appendage back to his Hand Cannon mode, switched ammo and fired back towards Blossom and Buttercup with his explosive shells. The shells sometimes exploded in mid-air, not too dissimilar to the Unidentified-Y powered superbeings' energy grenades, and to stay away from the shockwaves Blossom and Buttercup found themselves with the need to fly down.

 _Just a little bit more…_ Porter calculated as he examined the positions of the puffs while moving and shooting at the same time. His mind controlled every aspect, every data available… and when everything clicked into its expected place, the program was run.

With no possibility to fail.

Blossom blinked, and the instant after Porter was _flying_ towards her.

_Flying? FLYING?!_

Porter was not flying. He had _jumped_ towards her. With his inhuman might and the help of his robotic enhanced legs, of course. Of this Blossom was not aware, and she was too much shocked to react, at least not with how fast the Doctor was coming.

She was forced back into reality by the metal punch which hit her on the head, for the second time that day. It was not enough hard to knock her out, but enough to stun her, and Porter was swift to follow up by seizing her with the mutated, free hand.

"Leave her ALONE!" Buttercup shouted before nosediving towards the Doctor, but the robotic appendage was fast to change function again, and she was shot back by another explosive shell. Bubbles was frozen: too fearful to hit her sister by using her eyebeams, too weak to come to Buttercup's aid.

Porter elegantly landed on the ground, using both his legs and robotic hand to slow himself down. He then immediately stood up and put Blossom in front of himself. She was trying to free herself from the Doctor's grasp, with pathetic results.

" _Blossom."  
_

Blossom turned to face the one who called her, only to find eyes devoid of hatred. He was… annoyed. As much as annoyed as a normal person would be by a fly.

"Blossom Utonium, as others call you. Previously today, I told you to not mess with my plans anymore, and you let my advice be unheard. I suppose you'll regret soon your decision, since you _won't_ have a second chance."

Suddenly, Blossom felt fright. He had been plenty of times in her life as a superhero in dire situations. But the current situation got a lot worse than most of them in mere seconds.

She saw Porter's eyes slightly change in colour. She saw an even bigger part of the skin of his face get greener, as well as greenish scales beginning to appear on his neck. The robotic hand trembled, while something moved inside the mutant one, which got not bigger… but more muscular.

He had left more of the mutation to take control of himself, and the little girl could only gape at the pulsing veins now visible under the mutated skin of Porter's free arm. The one currently keeping her in its grasp by her waist.

When she realized what was going on, it happened, and a gigantic force began to try to squeeze _the life out of her._

Porter remained completely indifferent to his capture as she screamed.

* * *

Donnie's vision was not much better than a blur, but the details he needed were visible. Namely Decay's fists.

The two of them were in close combat again, and Donnie continued to play the defensive game. He was studying her, trying to find a weakness in her fighting style, but he was horrified to notice that she fought more like him than any of the girls or the Rowdyruff Boys. Except for the fact she seemed to do slightly better.

Donnie attempted a low kick to Decay's legs, but the girl was swift to move her knees up and evade the attack. She responded with a direct hook to the head, which Donnie right away parried with both arms. He realized too late that the lower part of his body was undefended and one of Decay's knees hit his stomach. The knock was so hard Donnie coughed up and drops of blood fell off his mouth, but his foe didn't stop and she uppercutted him, sending him back in the air.

Suddenly Donnie felt the so called 'battle rage' fill his muscles and went for the attack with both his legs, but Decay was prepared for it and almost danced away before grabbing his hands. Taken aback, Donnie found himself flung to the ground, where he landed hard for the nth time.

"C'mon, do something! I know you can do better, sweetie!" Decay joked. Donnie ignored her taunt and focused on his next move. _I need to think of something… she's fast, she's strong and she seems to know every move I do. But she must have a weak point… She has to!_

Then, his line of thought was stopped by a scream.

Donnie whirled his body and what he saw nearly made his skin go pale. Even Decay couldn't help but get distracted by the scene, while the Rowdyruff Boys were still busy fighting the last pack of mutants and at first didn't notice what was happening.

Blossom was screaming. Her shriek continued as Porter, unperturbed, persisted in his torture. Buttercup was nowhere to be found, knocked down by the previous direct hit, and Bubbles, terrorized to harm her sister more, remained petrified.

That continued until the sound of something _snapping_ was heard.

Suddenly, Blossom stopped screaming. Porter rotated his hand to give an inquisitive look on the immobile girl, before letting her fall to the ground. _Still._

Decay was unmoved and couldn't help but scoff at the scene. The Rowdyruff Boys had a different reaction altogether, since all of them suddenly stopped fighting at the 'snap' noise and after witnessing Porter's work they wore gaping, flabbergasted faces, not believing what they had just seen. Only after the mutants resumed their attacks they returned to their battle, even though they were less concentrated than before.

Donnie was praying. Praying that what he had just witnessed was just an error of his sight. A nightmare. Everything, _but_ what had just happened.

Bubble's eyes, already watery, were fixed on Blossom's body. Her face didn't give away any sign of emotion.

Registering the overall reaction of the infra-humans, Porter raised an interrogative eyebrow. Realizing they didn't know what he did, he proceeded to do a neutral explanation, almost mechanically, "She's not dead. Her skeleton is harder than titanium and not easily broken. I only managed to cause a minor fracture, one which would of course kill an ordinary human but not an infra-human."

His robotic hand modified again while he talked, now more to himself than anyone else, "Yet, my work is not finished. I might be able to penetrate her skin with a sharp enough blade now that she's subdued. One slick passage on her throat should do the-"

He was so focused in his plan he had failed to take notice of the absence of one 'infra-human' in the count. One who came violently to stop his disturbing speech.

"YOU FREAK!" Buttercup cried, anger filling her with rarely seen power. Her punches felt harder, her speed was higher, and overall Porter instantly knew he had to take this one seriously. "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!"

As Buttercup let her fury storm the Doctor, Bubbles floated quickly to Blossom's side, her face still neutral. She noticed the fact that her breathing was still there… she was alive. But she was still far from being okay.

Mojo Jojo grinned as he took the aim to the blonde's head. One precise headshot might result in a knock-out, and then he would be able to finish two Powerpuff Girls off easily. Already tasting victory's flavour, Mojo was surprised to see Bubbles stare back at him through the scope. When he moved away from his aiming posture, Bubbles was already over him, and before he could yelp in surprise, he was flying in the laboratory with several teeth shattered.

Bubbles slowly turned back, then she launched an ear-piercing shriek. An instant later, the blue puff was moving at the speed of light and soon joined her sister in the battle with the responsible of their leader's condition, completely ignoring the injury on her right arm.

In the meantime, the Rowdyruffs had already managed to deal with the very last group of mutants, and Butch had finally got his revenge by decapitating the head of the monstrous Chimaera, which finally no more posed a threat. Their celebration of the victory had a brief life as they turned back to the others and watched the two Powerpuff Girls fight with Porter, bewildered by the fury that had possessed them. Brick, Boomer and Butch gaped, somewhat captured by the spectacle taking place.

On the other hand, Decay lost interest quickly and went back to watch her opponent. Who, interestingly, was already watching her back.

"Your friends seem weak to me, _love._ Being reduced like that by an old geezer, ha! No wonder you-"

Her speech was interrupted by a knock on her teeth. Stumbling back in the air, Decay hovered randomly for some seconds before realizing she had been hit. Massaging her cheek, she glared at the obvious cause.

"Shut. The Trap. UP!" Donnie commanded, his voice almost spilling rage. Yet, Decay was unfazed, in fact she was getting angrier herself: "You'll _regret_ what you just did!" she threatened. And moments after, they resumed their duel.

* * *

Porter cursed under his breath after receiving a kick on his mutated, free arm by the green puff, almost feeling the bones inside dislocate. Had that limb been normal, it would have left his body and went for a travel by itself like it was nothing.

The Powerpuffs were mad, alright, and they were trying to hurt him. Badly. But Doctor Porter was not known for feeling fear, or preoccupation. Even in this situation, the villain had a plan. Bubbles and Buttercup were enraged and by so, their attacks had improved in power… but at the same time, their focus had lowered. They made more errors in their fury, their fight no more followed a precise scheme.

One, quick move and he would have both of them subdued in no time. _I just need to have…_

After rebounding the blue puff away, Porter prepared to defend himself from one of Buttercup's attacks. The green puff basically roared before storming him with a flurry of punches, half of which were dodged while the other half was parried. Blinded by her anger, Buttercup followed with a double kick in an attempt to make a head hit, but Porter was too fast and after missing her target the force of the attack made her lose control of her flight.

… _a chance!_

Buttercup found her head grasped by Porter's hand, and the doctor was quick to smash her to the ground, multiple times.

His action was suddenly stopped by a sonic scream emitted by Bubbles herself, which even he couldn't ignore. While staggering around, he managed to have his robotic left arm switch function again: when Bubbles stopped her attack and charged forward, the Doctor only had the time to shot one round towards the blue puff.

The blonde ignored the incoming projectile: she wasn't going to let it stop her. However, the Doctor had not fired a simple explosive round, and for this reason Bubbles was taken aback when she found herself entrapped in a metallic net. The metal didn't seem that hard and she would have needed only a few seconds to free herself, but the mad scientist didn't let her have the time. A moment before she could zap the mesh with her eyebeams, Porter had already taken hold of her with a swift jump. Landing on the ground, the Doctor proceeded to slam the little girl into the floor, then he raised his right fist and with one, precise hit, he struck the injury on her left arm.

The pain that shot through Bubbles body was immense and too much to bear even with her anger. Her shriek was just a confirmation of success to Porter, who turned again to deal with the green puff, already standing with a bloody nose. Roaring once again, Buttercup flied forward for a direct attack, but this time Porter went for the offensive as well and responded with a metal fist. The impact emitted a loud 'CLANG' that echoed in the chamber, and Buttercup found herself with her hands bleeding. Even so, she bit the bullet and continued her attacks, decision that proved to be wrong on the long term. Without being able to use her hands effectively, Buttercup was more vulnerable, and she managed to continue her assault only for one minute before having one of her hands fail her while trying to block one attack. A moment later, she was already under Porter's hold.

She however didn't surrender to fear immediately: while Porter's mutated hand kept her arms and legs firm, her eyes were free and they lightened up as she prepared to shoot her eyebeams directly on Porter's face. Before the blast could leave her pupils, however, Porter had snatched something from a hidden pocket in his robotic appendix, and literally _shoved_ a small tank in her mouth.

The move was so unexpected Buttercup at first didn't know what to do, and before she could decide whatever was contained inside the tank began to flood her mouth and go down her throat. Nausea pervaded her body, followed by a sudden loss of energy, and seconds later her eyes went white.

Porter let the girl fall to the ground and he fell himself on his knees, recovering his breath. He gave a glance to his remaining robotic arm before dislocating it and throwing the battered thing away, thus freeing his other mutated limb, and he closed his eyes in concentration. By now his entire face was coloured in green and his general appearance was more and more similar to the mutants he had created.

_Focus. Do not lose control of yourself._

He stood up and contemplated the green puff lying in front of him. Buttercup's eyes were vacuous and a disgusting substance was coming out of her mouth, but she was still breathing. Porter was sincerely surprised by the endurance these infra-humans owned, but he soon shooed the thought away. His job was not finished, and all the Powerpuff Girls were to be disposed of _for good._

He was going to get near Buttercup when he heard heavy fighting sounds, and he remembered about the test. His mind for once trailed off and, completely forgetting about the puffs, he went to personally assist to the moment he had waited for so long.

* * *

The fight between the two European superpowered kids had long ceased to be a game from either side. The two were actively trying to _hurt_ each other, and they both were quite good at it.

As they fought in the air, Donnie thrusted a punch forward, which Decay dodged by tilting her head, keeping her stance and therefore being able to respond with a fist of her own. The hit impacted on Donnie's shoulder but the boy didn't flinch and answered by seizing her arm with the will to pull her down.

Before he could follow with his idea, though, Decay reacted by doing something unexpected: her head lunged at his arm and she bit it, _hard._ The boy yelped and retracted his arm, now showing the painful marks of the girls' teeth, leaving Decay free to kick him on the chest and elbow him down, sending him in a quick course towards the ground. Then she generated a force field in front of herself and dashed towards him, with the clear intent to ram into him.

Donnie regained the use of his body halfway from the ground and after realizing the incoming attack, he made a force field of his own. When he finally landed on the ground and Decay reached him, a deafening 'BOOM' was heard along with its wave but not a single particle was emitted. The two of them stayed immobile for some seconds. Then the fields disappeared and they were again on one another.

They were slowly stopping to parry and avoid attacks, like they no more cared about their well-being, but only about landing a hit on their adversary. Donnie, while not exactly in the best of the states, was managing to get some hits and soon Decay had her fair number of bruises as well.

Their faces were both frowning mirrors of anger. Decay was furious for the fact the battle was taking more than she expected and the fact this surrogate of a boy was keeping her at bay, and her fury gained in strength as they fought. Donnie's anger came from the situation itself: from how much Decay was a danger to everyone in Ultrapolis to how Blossom had been reduced by the Doctor. He didn't even know what had happened to Buttercup and Bubbles since he was focused on his foe, but he was nonetheless determined in defeating the teal eyed girl.

Determination, however, wasn't enough to beat someone as strong as Decay. After sustaining battles for almost the full day, Donnie's energy was draining fast and, after a few minutes of intense combat, he began to slow down his attacks. They were still fast and the slowness was barely noticeable, but Decay did see it anyway. Discovery that made her _smile_ again.

Her, on the other hand, had been just created, and she had started to fight seriously only a few minutes before. She was at her maximum strength.

Her smile turned into a _grin._

Eventually, Donnie's stamina betrayed him, and he failed to evade a direct hit to his face. Decay's punch hit full force and hard, sending him stumbling back.

Decay literally leaped over Donnie and knocked him down the ground, then she went over him and blocked his hands with her legs, basically leaving him defenceless. The girl disturbingly licked her lips before beginning to let her fury loose. She punched Donnie on the face, repeatedly, and she didn't stop. Not after ten seconds, not after twenty.

Only after a full minute, Decay decided to move away. She crossed her arms and waited for him to stand up. Donnie, his face now with more bruises than ever, gritted his teeth and emitted an annoyed wheeze before attempting to sit up. Getting on his feet proved to be difficult and in the end, he was staggering just to remain immobile.

He was no more in condition to fight. One of his eyes was closed after a direct hit and he was spending a huge amount of energy just to remain still. In his state, Decay was nothing less than _towering_ over him.

"I'm- _*cough*…_ I'm not… done!... I'm- we're not… finished!" Donnie's words left his mouth without conviction.

Decay scoffed before replying, "Such a shame… to see that beautiful face reduced to a punching bag."

Her grin turned back into a frown as she continued, "You deserved it, though. We could be a perfect couple, but no, you had to react, you had to go play the hero! Ha! Pitiful you are indeed, Donnie… Too bad. I'm going to show you how trying to stop _me_ had been an error!"

An energy sphere began to grow on her right hand.

"You know, there are a whole lot of ways I can choose to kill you. But only one thrills me and reaches my heart. The heat of my own energy, as it annihilates everything I want…"

A second sphere appeared on her left hand. Slowly, she brought both hands on her head and the spheres fused, not differently from what she did before while creating the Energy Turret. However, this time, the resulting oval remained in its place over her.

"And by now, I want you to suffer as much as possible! Hearing you screams while you _burn alive_ … ohh, what a delight will it be!"

The sphere grow in volume continuously. Its colour changed from teal to a mixture of yellow, red and orange, and Donnie slowly began to feel hot from the heat it was emitting. Finally, fear had replaced his anger, and he let himself go down in despair.

As he stayed on the floor kneeling, he stared into Decay's eyes. Her grin had returned, but it was no more her annoying, amused one. No, this one was far different. It was craziness what was transpiring from that smile. Madness. Trepidation. Insanity.

She was not stopping, not before him, not before anything. She would have kept true to her name and brought decay to everything she encountered, to everyone who dared to cross her path. Death _and_ decay.

In that moment, Donnie understood what had been the bonus ingredient, similarly to how the Rowdyruffs were first created not out of Chemical X. This time though, in place of the Unidentified Y that gave him his powers, Decay had received living blood. The blood of her creator, Doctor Porter, who wanted nothing less but Donnie's demise and would have done anything to pursue his goal. No matter how hard, no matter how stupid. He didn't create her out love: he created her out of desire, and that desire was killing Donnie.

He was doomed.

Donnie gave a glance around. Mojo Jojo was still nowhere to be found, while Doctor Porter was near them, visibly trying not to get excited. He ignored him and tried to look for her friends. Maybe he could give a final look to them before meeting his end.

What he saw almost made his throat close itself.

The Rowdyruff Boys were still in the chamber, and by now they were looking with astonished faces at a scene they couldn't even believe was possible. They were looking at the bodies of the Powerpuff Girls. Donnie from the distance couldn't see the details, but his eyes were still able to tell that the three of them were all lying on the ground, immobile. He couldn't even be sure about them being alive or not.

Donnie's heart slowed down, and he did a full breath cycle. After which, he opened his eyes and faced the monster that was going to kill him.

That is, if he didn't do anything.

There was one last possibility. The solution could still end with his death as a side effect, but Donnie would have preferred it nonetheless to give Porter what he wanted. If he had to leave the world today, he would bring _her_ with him.

He just needed her to get completely captivated in the act. And when Decay began to laugh in the most wicked way possible, he knew that was his chance.

He thought of a cone. A simple geometric, 3D shape everyone knew about. Yet, what he thought about was a Euclidean cone, one that was perfect as long as it remained in the safe heaven of theory and paper. In reality it couldn't exist since even an atom had a surface, and by the way even something as Duranium couldn't be as sharp as a single atom.

Yet, there was something Donnie owned as a power that wasn't composed by atoms, at least not those regular physical particles. And it was his last chance.

The sweat coming down his cheeks was now caused by struggle, not by the heat coming from the death sphere, as his secret ace began to form in his right hand. And when Decay began to let the spherical inferno descend towards him, Donnie darted forward, raising his secret weapon and bellowing a war cry. He managed to be fast to evade the sphere enough to not be pulverized by it, but he was so exhausted he didn't even register the fact that he had received a bad burn on his head's side.

The last energy bit was sent to the muscles of his right arm, as while Decay and Donnie fell to the ground together, the boy pushed the minuscule, yet almost perfect cone-shaped force field down into Decay's chest. When Donnie felt the movement come to a stop and the cone itself disappear since he didn't have any energy to keep it active, he blacked out before he could hear anything.

* * *

When the dark blonde boy reopened his eyes, he found himself lying on the ground, which was expected by itself. He didn't expect to be _alive,_ though.

He was tired, and every muscle in his body was protesting by providing him with more pain that he would have wanted. Despite all of this, Donnie forced himself to at least sit up. He needed to make sure. To understand what had happened.

The first living being he saw was the form of Doctor Porter, who he supposed would have been extremely happy by the moment. What he saw instead was a bewildered man, so much that the mutation over his face seemed to have regretted back to its normal state. His eyes were fixed on something behind Donnie and his mouth was twisted into a scowl.

Only one reason would have been possible for that display by the cold scientist. And when Donnie turned to watch what was the Doctor so interested in, he momentarily lost his breath.

Decay was there, and she was crying. Crying exactly like the little girl she looked like… miles away from the demented look she showed moments before trying to kill him. Her cries echoed in the laboratory as she tried with her hands to stop the bleeding over her chest. Yet, red liquid continued to come out of the hole that was planted there.

Donnie, not believing at first what he was seeing, worked for some seconds until he managed to stand up. Staggering a bit, he finally made a step towards Decay, who was watching him by then.

The black-haired girl screamed in fright and she crawled back, her face showing pure fear. In doing so she worsened the condition of her injury, and she was forced to stop and put her hands back on the wound. Then, she continued to cry.

That was it. The test was over and he had survived it.

He had won.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right. First of all, sorry for the huge delay. During the last months I found myself with very few free time to dedicate to my hobbies, including fanfiction, and at the same time my will to write was reduced to a minimum. It's almost been a year and a half since I first published this story and I have every intention to finish it as soon as possible by now.
> 
> This two-part chapter was the hardest one to write. A lot of fights which I tried to make as much as less repetitive as possible, and some suggestions to what will happen next. Next chapter will deal with the aftermath of the Duel, and after that will come the Epilogue chapter. Both of which are probably going to be short compared to the mean of this story, but we shall see.


	11. Results

Suddenly, the crying little girl in front of Donnie lost any importance it previously held. Now that she was no more a threat, the dark-blonde boy could finally let himself worry about other matters, namely the current state of his American friends. He ignored Doctor Porter as well, who continued to stand motionless, eyes wide open in shock.

He weakly hovered in the air, paying attention not to pass out again, and quietly moved towards the location of the Powerpuff Girls. The Rowdyruff Boys were still there, their faces showing awkwardness and confusion. They couldn't decide how to react to the situation… despite fighting the girls for so long, this had been the very first time they had personally witnessed their enemies to be almost reduced to lifeless corpses. They didn't even think that was possible.

Bubbles was the first one of the girls Donnie saw, the only one of the three who was still awake, or at least tried to. Her sobs had not stopped for one second since the clash with Doctor Porter, and her left hand clasped the right arm, trying to soothe the pain that was oppressing her.

"Bubbles. Bubbles!" Donnie called, and right away the blue eyes of the blonde were fixed on him. The sight of her face wet from tears and her suffering expression made Donnie's heart wrench itself. Even so, it was no surprise: the injury on her right arm was in an awful state. She had already lost too much blood for comfort, and there was no way to tell how long she could keep it up without blacking out. _She needed help._

But how could Donnie help her? He had learned something about first aid in the previous months while he tried to learn useful skills for his days in Ultrapolis, and now he was glad he did, but without proper equipment how could he do anything? Perhaps the best decision was to bring her to the nearest hospital of the city at once, but, leaving alone the fact he had no idea how to get out of the tunnel maze built by Porter, that would have meant leaving Buttercup and Blossom alone. _I'd probably have to carry the three of them together… Maybe if I-_

Something fell by his side, and when Donnie turned in alarm he was startled to see a medical kit, words written in Esperanto over it but the red cross tell-tale about its contents. He looked up to see an even more surprising sight: Boomer.

"Do. Not. _Ask._ "

Since there was no time for questions, Donnie limited himself to nod and got to work, mentally thanking that despite Porter's mind being so twisted, it at least worked enough to let one of those boxes be inside the chamber. In a few minutes, he was done and Bubbles' wounded arm was disinfected, patched up and all white in bandages. He did his best, but he knew that she still needed a proper doctor to treat her.

"Bubbles. Please, listen to me. Can you stand up?" Donnie asked. Bubbles opened her mouth but the words died in her throat, so she nodded her head and with some struggle managed to get back to her feet. While her face was still a mask of pain, she seemed to be able to walk around alone.

"Good. We need to check your sisters, follow me," Donnie stated, not losing time. Bubbles tried once again to talk and managed to whisper an 'all right'. She was possibly more worried about the other girls than Donnie ever was.

Buttercup wasn't too far away. When the two of them reached her, they were displeased to see that she was still apparently knocked out, with a slimy substance coming out of her mouth. Before they could do anything, though, they noticed Butch just beside her, and they were terrified to see him give a little kick to her side.

The action however had other results as Buttercup suddenly shot up from her back and began to cough her lungs out. The Rowdyruff Boy scoffed and moved back, leaving his counterpart alone. Unsure of what to do, Donnie and Bubbles approached the green puff.

"Gah!" the brunette complained, "What the- _*cough*…_ the heck! Ew! …darn…"

She continued in her rant for some seconds before realizing there were two persons right in front of her.

"Guys… _*cough*…_ Ya're okay?" she stuttered, trying to fight the foul taste that had invaded her mouth.

"We're good, Buttercup. What about you? What happened?" Bubbles questioned, a hand over her mouth.

"Doc shoved some type of canister into my mouth… _*cough*…_ and the next thing I know is lying with this saliva-thing on my cheeks and the world's worst taste you could imagine stuck into my mouth. Apart from- _eeech! …_ I mean, that said, I'm okay but I feel weak… I don't think I can fly around."

She glanced at her sister and noticed the bandages over her arm, "You found something to fix the wound on your arm, Bubs?"

"Donnie did." Bubbles clarified, pointing at the boy at her side.

"I don't think you want to know how I got it but yeah, I did it." Donnie said shyly, watching elsewhere. Buttercup however remained serious as she asked one last question, "Donnie, listen... What about _her?"_

He knew who she was referring to. "You hear _her_ cries, do you? She won't harm us anymore. _I beat her."_

Only then, Buttercup let herself smile. A weak smile for sure, but a smile nonetheless, one that made Donnie more than happy. "Way to go, pal."

The three of them stayed silent and nodded to each other before moving away, Donnie helping Buttercup out. There was still one Powerpuff Girl left… the most worrying one of the trio. And indeed, when they saw Blossom, dread overwhelmed them.

The leader of the Powerpuff Girls was still in her coma-like state. Her breathing was unstable and every cycle felt struggled, like an enormous amount of energy was spent into the act. Both Bubbles and Buttercup let themselves fall at her sides, and they had eyes for nothing but their sister.

Soon enough, Bubbles failed to keep it cool and she resumed to cry. While she wept, she grabbed Blossom's right hand and clung on it, not having the courage to touch her sister more in fear of damaging her already troubled body.

Buttercup did her best to remain calm, but not even her could resist the sight unperturbed. While keeping Blossom's left hand on her own, she felt her eyes get wet. Annoyed, she dried them off and tried to speak, "Blossom… Please, Blossom… Say something… We're here Blossom, it's over, all over, Donnie did it… Bloss, don't you _dare…"_

Brick was floating a few meters away from the scene, watching his sworn enemies with an apparently neutral face. His two brothers had already joined him, but none of them got any reprimand for their previous acts. Brick liked to think of himself as a careless villain, but saying he was indifferent to what was happening in front of him would have been a lie… even though that didn't stop him from putting up an unimpressed look.

Donnie's reaction was altogether opposite. His fists tightened and he began to feel an emotion that was fairly new for him: _hatred._ For there was only one living being who was fully responsible for what had been done to his friends.

He slowly whirled his body around to watch the culprit. Doctor Porter was still fixed in his place, standing without a flinch like he was a statue of stone. He almost seemed to be vulnerable, maybe he could…

"Blossom!"

Donnie hastily turned his attention back to the girls and what he saw filled him with joy. Blossom's eyes were open. She was awake!

"Blossom! Can you see me? Can you talk? Please, say something!" Buttercup shot words out without thinking, but when she felt Blossom's hand tight on her own, she stopped. The redhead opened her mouth and weakly replied, "Hey… I'm good… Just tired…"

Bubbles suddenly burst out crying and hugged her sister, even though her cries were no more of despair. Calmly, Blossom raised her right hand and hugged her back the best she could, "I'm here, Bubbles… I'm okay…"

Her eyes moved and her gaze fell on Donnie, who was already knelling by Bubbles' side. Her stare practically demanded explanations, and Donnie was quick to realize it.

"It's over. I've defeated Decay for good, and by doing so I defeated Porter as well. We won."

Blossom smiled, and Donnie couldn't help but smile back. The four of them were all quite battered up but they were all alive and together. That was all that mattered.

Meanwhile, Brick decided that it was time to leave. Turning away, he said to his brothers, "We've seen enough. Let's get the heck out of here."

His tone didn't leave space for discussion, but neither Butch nor Boomer had nothing on the contrary. Butch's face was blank and somewhat bored, while Boomer seemed to be embarrassed, and they both didn't want to stay near the heroes more time than strictly needed. Thus, the Rowdyruff Boys quietly departed from the ruined laboratory, and while the girls and the boy of the other team did give a glance towards them, they didn't say anything. The boys had a role in that day's events, but their role was debatable and in any case they wouldn't even have been able to stop them.

Right after the boys left, a thunderous bellow echoed in the chamber. The Powerpuff Girls and Donnie watched in awe as Doctor Porter finally let his fury loose not too dissimilarly to his chimp ally.

He swore, half in English and half in his own language, stomping into the remains of the destroyed laboratory and obliterating whatever seemed to be still in one piece with the power of his mutated hands, all while shouting his anger out.

Donnie stood up, every one of his muscles stiffened, and he waited. If for whatever reason the Doctor decided to go after them, he would have had to defend himself and the girls, because even if he was far from being ready to fight again, he was the only one able between the four of them to do so even remotely. And there was no way he wasn't going to at least try. The girls waited immobile in their places on the ground, observing with apprehension the angry scientist.

After two minutes of rampage, Porter's entire head had changed colour to a greenish shade and the resemblance to his own mutants had become uncanny to say the least. Even so, he suddenly stopped his path of destruction by landing a fist on the floor right in front of himself, kneeling down.

He remained in his position for an entire minute, motionless and breathing heavily, until he had gained his usual level of control. Fighting the random twitches, he stood up and revealed that his face had recovered at least in part the normal colour, even though he seemed to have aged up even more.

"The test… is over…" he selected his words as he faced the heroes, "…and you've managed to pass it Donnie. I cannot ignore such a result… despite the problem it constitutes in my plans."

Porter paused, but Donnie didn't reply. He wanted to let him talk, since Porter had the habit to tell everything he wanted to do. If he decided to do something crazy, he would at least know it before he did.

"This means that I've failed in creating a foe able to not beat you, but _surpass_ you, Donnie. I'm tempted to repeat the same without the meddling of you and the other infra-humans, but I know that if it had to work, it would have worked anyway even this way."

He raised his hand and made a denying gesture as he continued, "Do not however think this is over, infra-human. I might not be able to surpass personally your design, but I know you won't resist forever. One day, I will succeed in my quest and my struggle will end…"

He raised his chin and faced the ceiling, "You hear me? One day, I will win. I will finally demonstrate how erroneous and pathetic your attempts were! How your delirious works were-"

Donnie knew who Porter's erratic words were aimed at. He couldn't take it anymore. The logic of Porter was something he didn't want to pay attention to anymore. Because he now knew that he was wrong.

"SHUT UP!"

Porter stared at Donnie with an annoyed look, but Donnie maintained his angry scowl. "Just stop, Porter! I no more care about what you think, what you say… anything! Your line of thought is flawed from every point of view I look at it from!"

"Please, infra-human, I'd be happy to hear more about your opinion," Porter asked sarcastically. While Donnie wouldn't have wanted to satisfy him, the emotions prevented him from stopping.

"It's true that I am not perfect… no, I'm not the so called 'perfect little boy' or whatever the original recipe was aimed at. But that doesn't matter, because no one is perfect, but everyone can get better. That's what I did! That's why I crossed the ocean looking for help when I was alone! That's why I returned to Ultrapolis to make things right for the wrong I had done! That's why I'm not going to let your lies mess my head ever again!"

Donnie would have continued but he was surprised to hear Blossom's voice, who was visibly exerting herself to speak. "More so if whatever evil plans… and thoughts you have, Doctor Porter… are nothing but crazy, twisted ideas… that are based purely on your pride and rivalry you could never get over with!"

"You are a poor excuse for a scientist, let alone a man," Buttercup insulted, "since you cannot even accept your own mediocrity, Porter! I fought a lot of villains but you by far are the most pathetic of them all!"

Bubbles added her own part as well by saying, "And while trying to reach your goal you did all of… _this,_ causing _pain_ all around you, creating monsters which shouldn't even exist and putting the entire city of Ultrapolis, if not the world, in danger with your doings, without a care! You are MEAN!"

" **That's why, Doctor Porter, we will always be able to beat YOU!"** the four of them yelled together.

Porter at first seemed to be stunned… then, he simply chuckled.

"You should see yourself… three infra-humans powerless and vulnerable with one barely standing on his own feet, and they try to actually threaten me? I don't know if I should consider it cute or comical…"

His face was again serious as he continued, "However, I'm not really interested in what you think. My plans might appear non-sense to others, but as long as they make sense to me, I won't stop. _Never."_

Before the puffs could reply, Porter walked away. Letting him escape wasn't something neither of the four heroes would have wanted to do, but they weren't exactly in the best state for fighting.

"There is still something I have to do, regarding what happened today…"

Until that moment, Decay had been lying on the ground where Donnie had left her, crying and trying her best to stop the bleeding. She didn't pay attention to what had been going on with the others, thus she was startled by the sudden utter of her name.

" _Decay."_

Decay hastily turned to who had called her, and her face went white.

Porter approached her while he talked, "You are one of my utmost failure, Decay. Nevertheless, it is true that from errors we can learn, and that's what I'm going to do. I do not feel much towards you, not contempt, not regret..."

Perhaps there was hope for the injured ruff. Maybe her creator was going to forgive her?

"That said, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a slight annoyance when I watched your defeat in first person. You should know, 'my beautiful daughter', that in my workplace nothing is dropped and everything is reused and recycled."

One of the pair of mutated hands of Porter twitched slightly, and Decay say something bright on the tips of its fingers. Her heart pulse gained in speed.

"So, I'm afraid to say that I won't let you go, since I have to _revert you to your previous state._ If you fail to catch what my words mean, let me rephrase it: _I'm going to kill you._ "

The blunt news made her froze for a second. Then, she screamed and tried a pitiful attempt to move back, but her escape was stopped by the remains of a wooden shelf and the enormous amount of debris behind it. She halted, lying her back on the wood while realizing there was no escape. No hope.

Porter raised the same mutated arm to reveal sharp claws in place of where the nails used to be. "They're not comparable to Duranium as my porcupines' spikes are, but the mutation has still made them quite sharp. And since you're already wounded, it will be more than enough."

Decay shrieked. Her cries pierced the walls and reached long distances in Porter's hideout, and her eyes, tired and red, were almost exploding out of her orbits. But Doctor Porter was impassive.

"While this is needed, I will be frank. I might be able to swiftly kill you by targeting your heart, but you have served me so well, you definitely deserve a slower death… enjoy the present of your 'dear father', Decay!"

Before he could make a step further, the Doctor heard a whoosh sound and he raised an eyebrow when he saw Donnie in front of him, blocking his path.

"The advice not to cross my path applies to you as well, infra-human," Porter warned, "So I'd suggest you to step aside."

Donnie, glaring at his nemesis, did not move.

"Huh, I suppose I can add this to the list of your defects. _Idiocy._ Maybe this is enough to demonstrate how deficient you-…"

"Cut the show off, Porter. I do not care what you think, don't you remember?" Donnie interjected, earning an annoyed glare. "Yes, she has tried to kill me. She even has threatened to do much worse. And there was no way to tell what she would have done afterwards. But she's still a living being and I won't let you end her life… because I'm better than you."

Porter brought a hand over his forehead and chuckled again. "How ironic is that? Oh, whatever, if you care so much about the other infra-human, do as you please. Losing more time than needed here would be erroneous for me… and that is particularly true _now._ "

There was a new ambience noise that had been getting louder and louder as the minutes passed, and Porter was aware of it. Only now, though, Donnie and the Powerpuff Girls had come to realize what it was: sirens, and some rare gunshots.

_Those must be the security squads the Mayor talked about,_ Blossom thought. _That's a relief… it wouldn't have been easy to travel back to the city by ourselves. He was right, after all._

The redhead was by now sitting on the floor, after arguing with her other two sisters, who still weren't letting her try to stand up. He wanted to get a hold of her body but she had to admit that whatever had been done to her it was not wise to inspect further about it by herself. When she turned back to where Donnie and the Doctor were, she found out that Porter had disappeared. Footsteps were heard in the surroundings, then they slowly ceased to be hearable.

Donnie sighed. He knew that he would have to deal with Doctor Porter again in the future, be it in a direct fight or by one of his 'tests', and he might have to do it alone. Even so, he wasn't frightened by the thought. Donnie now knew his enemy, and he knew that he wasn't completely invincible. When the time would come, he would be prepared.

Only one matter was left.

Decay gulped when Donnie's eyes fell on her. His gaze was a mixture of a lot of feelings and the girl couldn't decipher it. In her doubts, she did the only thing she could think of doing. Smile.

It was no more the annoying smile that she kept while fighting the Rowdyruffs first, and Donnie later. It was no more the demented smile she wore when she was inches away from annihilating the yellow puff. The boy knew that Decay's smile this time was sincere. It made sense… he did save her life.

But it wasn't enough to let him forget about what had happened. Not only about the little problem with the death energy ball and fighting to the death… about what she stood for. What she represented, and who her creator was.

Donnie didn't know what to do of this girl. He scowled while he examined his possibilities: she had saved her… but now?

Finally, he gave out an irritated cry before saying, "Go away. Leave Ultrapolis and do not ever return. If I see you again, or you do any type of evil deed… I won't be this generous."

His words were hard, but he felt like he needed to make himself clear. Decay had a chance, but if she ever returned as the fierce super-powered girl he had met today, he knew he had to end the threat she posed for good.

Decay's smile disappeared, but she didn't get angry. Her look got somewhat… sad. She stood up, then with an evident struggle she managed to hover a bit over the ground. Keeping one hand on the wound, she slowly floated away, leaving behind herself a trail of crimson red.

Donnie stared at her until she had effectively disappeared behind one of the portals. Only then he let himself turn back and he went to meet again with the girls.

"Girls," he started, "I just wanted to say… I'm sorry… I'm very, very sorry, for what happened today. I just wanted you to have a good time here in Europe and here you are, injured and all. I'm… I'm…"

"Donnie, please, don't mention it. There was no way for you to know about what was going to happen today," Blossom reassured, giving him a stern look, "You couldn't know of the Rowdyruff Boys and you certainly couldn't know of Doctor Porter and his plans. We… we were all just very unlucky and I'm glad we've come out of it all right."

"Yeah, Donnie. We're still happy to see you, and we're happy that we're all alive. If we knew this before, we would have come to aid you all the same, because there is no way in the world we would have left you alone against that mad scientist!" Bubbles affirmed.

"So, get that pout out of your face and cheer up, because you still have a whole lot to show us around here!" Buttercup demanded.

And the three of them smiled.

That was the last time Donnie was surprised by the bright attitude of the girls. He knew it for sure now: how much he was lucky to have the Powerpuff Girls as his friends.

Before he could reply, though, a red dot appeared over his front, followed by an evil laugh.

"Do not think that you're finished yet! For I, Mojo Jojo, am far from being beaten!" Mojo Jojo threatened as he approached them with the laser rifle at hand, aiming at the yellow puff. "Make one step towards me, little boy, and I'll make sure to have you feel pain! You are at my mercy, and nothing is going to stop me! Not the Powerpuff Girls who are weak and vulnerable! Not you, who are under my sight! Not the failing plan of my ex-colleague Porter, who forgot about one thing! No one can do better than what Mojo Jojo has already done!"

And Mojo's monologue was terminated when four Spec Ops police men appeared out of nowhere and tackled him to the ground. Seconds later, he was in shackles, grumbling under his breaths. _"Curses…"_

"He never changes…" Buttercup said, rolling her eyes, before turning back her attention to Donnie along with her sisters. They were waiting him to say something, and Donnie had just a few seconds before the medics would reach them.

"Well girls, now I can finally say it. _Welcome to Ultrapolis."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used to think this chapter would have been easy to write, but I was proved wrong. Trying to make something coherent with the rest of the plot was more difficult than I expected, but I probably should have it since most of this story had been written more than a few months ago.


	12. The Dawn After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, I can say it: the final chapter is out. It's been a long ride and I should have given an end to this story sooner than this, but alas, here we are. For the few who actually were interested in this little fanfiction, I'm sorry, and I hope that the complete work will be worth the wait. Thanks for reading!

Two Spec Ops soldiers tiptoed in the hallway, the weapons raised and ready. Their faces were hidden behind balaclavas but a genius wasn't needed to understand they were focused on whatever could suddenly leap out of the darkness.

The forward agent raised a hand in a 'stop' gesture and the two of them waited for some seconds. There was no noise hearable from the two men.

"Blackburn," the second operative whispered, "what is it?"

"Didn't they teach you back in the barracks how to _shut up?"_

"There's no one here, and you know it. Those mutants make a whole lot of noise when they're around…"

"Dimitri, we're no more looking only for the mutants…"

The second man scoffed, "From what I heard, _he_ may as well be considered one."

Blackburn pretended to not have heard the retort. "…just stop fooling around and follow me _quietly._ If you care that much, I stopped because I thought I heard something…"

"You're hearing things, believe me. Let's just finish this section and get this over with."

The two men resumed their stroll and in a few moments their flashlights disappeared behind a turn of the tunnel. Not long after, a shadow emerged from a sidewall of the hallway.

Doctor Porter scanned the surroundings, and in particular he controlled there was no one coming from the direction the two special agents came from. When he was sure there was none, he resumed his path.

Porter had been lurking in the inferior tunnels of his network for two days. The special squads sent by the Mayor, who wasn't keen on surrendering, wanted nothing less but him arrested and brought to justice, and they weren't stopping. Unfortunately for them, the Doctor had other ideas.

His lair extended inside a large area under the terrain and he knew the Spec Ops policemen couldn't control all of it. He had already managed to seal one of the farthest sections, enough to restart his work, and he was by now in a scouting mission to retrieve whatever hadn't been destroyed by the agents. The Mayor had been clear with his directives and everything that was deemed valuable to the Doctor had been taken away or rendered useless. Not to mention all the Containment Farms and Reproduction Basins, which were still under sterilization process.

Months of work… all lost. And all thanks to one, single _infra-human._

Porter gritted his teeth and opened and closed his hands, still out of their original metal enclosures, to calm himself down. Controlling his anger was difficult without the continuous injections by his metal appendixes, and he was glad to have the boots still with him. Otherwise, he probably would have rampaged long before.

He could still start over. Beginning with the restart of a biological laboratory to generate mutant adjutants to help him with the creation of new chambers like he already did and continue with his studies. After that, he would be able to turn his attention back to Ultrapolis' so called 'hero'.

He allowed himself a small smile. Two days before it had been a failure, but tomorrow was another question, and he would have tried hard to make it a success at any cost.

He had all the time he wanted.

* * *

Somewhere, deep into the forest that encircled most of the city of Ultrapolis, a little girl was crying.

A dark red trail of stains marked a path between the branches and through the bramble that brought to a lone, old oak located in the centre of a small clearing. Under the shadow of it, there was the girl, who continued to weep copiously.

Her cries had more than one cause. She was born with one purpose, one she deemed so pathetic and easy she didn't even pay much attention to it… and she failed. Yet, she didn't care about not pleasing her creator, especially not after what he had tried to do to her.

She was hurt by the thought of _weakness_ itself. Here she was, a vulnerable little girl with a wound in her chest alone in a forest: not exactly what she had planned to become.

The injury hurt, indeed, but her healing abilities were there doing their work, and she knew she would survive if she kept herself out of reach for some time. But still… how could she tolerate this? She was helpless now. She was born to be the exact opposite, to be terror incarnate!

And now she was hiding in a forest, crying like a pitiful baby. _'Babygirl'_ , just like the Rowdyruffs had called her.

In her sadness Decay couldn't take it more and she let a weak shriek come out of her mouth. The sudden movement made the injury ache even more and she frowned, trying to bit the bullet.

What was even her _purpose_ now? What _role_ did she have?

Her thoughts were wandering and it wouldn't have taken much until more extreme ideas crossed her mind. Before that could happen, however, a distraction came in.

Something was moving behind the bushes. Decay raised her strained eyes but didn't try to move or escape. She was too weak to fight back and too weak to attempt a fast runaway. _I might as well let my 'guest' reveal himself… Maybe it's Donnie who changed his idea and came to end my life… maybe it's Porter who didn't forget about me and came to retrieve and recycle what belongs to him…_

Instead of any of them, an animal came out of the hiding place. It was no normal animal however… it was one of Porter's mutants: a porcupine.

Decay wasn't surprised that much. She knew about the Spec Ops intruders who had pierced into Porter's hideout by multiple locations since she had to avoid encountering them the previous day, and she knew they shot at the mutants on sight. No wonder some of the beasts had decided to flee.

What she didn't expect was the creature stopping a few meters away from her and sitting down, staring at her with its monstrous, pupil-less eyes.

The appearance of the mutant was truly menacing, but Decay didn't give any sign of minding it. She simply watched the creature back, her sobs slowing down, and the two of them stayed that way for a few minutes.

Eventually, the porcupine made some steps forward with its three pairs of paws until it was only a few centimetres away from the girl. It emanated a stench not easy to be ignored, but Decay didn't even notice it. Her full attention was on the creature itself. The porcupine made a low guttural sound, then it cautiously tried to touch Decay's left side with its mangled snout.

Eyes open in shock, Decay raised her hand and did the only thing she could think of: try to cuddle the mutant. The porcupine emitted more guttural noises and sat down by her side, letting her pass her hand over its body (the sides at least since its back was covered by a thick layer of spines). _It… it has accepted me._

Decay couldn't help but chuckle, even if it made her grit her teeth in pain. The _thing_ resting just a few centimetres away, easily considerable a bizarre joke of nature, was the only living being that had tried to comfort her in the previous days. The presence of the mutant was able to calm the little girl down, and the tears stopped to flow down her cheeks.

She now could think a bit more freely, and she pondered a bit more over her situation. _Maybe I shouldn't worry about my purpose. That is something I can find myself… but, even so… How did I end up in this situation in the first place?_

Then, it hit her.

_Donnie._

Donnie was the cause of everything.

He was the one reason she had been brought to life in the first place.

He was the one enemy who managed to beat her badly and almost killed her.

And last but not least, he was the one idiot who had _saved her life._

She wasn't sure about what to think of him. Hatred? He had defeated her and almost ended her life, indeed. Contempt? He had saved her and somewhat brought her to this situation, or maybe that was gratitude? Perhaps she felt confusion since he did something so unexpected… to face off Porter again just to let her live. Or maybe she was worrying too much about a dimwit like him doing something so stupid?

She had lots of questions, and to answer them she had only one way. Get to the subject at hand personally.

She remembered him telling her not to make him see her again, and she sighed. _Sorry, Donnie, but I cannot do that._

The porcupine suddenly stood up and growled in the air, and Decay _smiled_ in response. The first smile in two days, and the second true one in her short life.

She used the porcupine's shoulders to help herself stand up, trying to not exert the area of her wound, then she floated in the air to eliminate the issue. The porcupine watched her and waited immobile, ready to follow its new master wherever she would decide to go. The girl couldn't help but say _"Dankon…",_ even though she didn't know if the beast could understand her.

… _wait, did I just thank someone? …oh._

One more thing she would never have imagined to do right after she had been created. Although there have been a lot of unexpected developments lately…

She moved her rebel hair fringe out of her eyes and began to hover forward, the porcupine following her. Before deciding what to do, she let herself have a final thought.

_Donnie… we will meet again, sooner or later. I swear it._

* * *

It was early in the morning in Ultrapolis, and the sun was just beginning its set over the horizon. The city itself was already awakened, so it was no wonder to see that inside the main hospital of the metropolis everything was in full swing.

Inside one of the various buildings that constituted the hospital, a trio of children sat in a waiting room. Every one of them carried the marks of the injuries they had received two days before.

Bubbles had a new set of bandages covering her wound. The medics had at first been reluctant to believe the injury had been kept under control for hours by a simple cover of ice, but they had to reconsider after a demonstration by Blossom herself. Later, they found out that there was thankfully no sign of infection: after renewing the patches, they told her that she just needed to rest for a while to recover from the loss of blood. And true enough, Bubbles had been left alone by any type of pain for a full day by now.

Donnie had been quite battered up as well. The most serious damage had been the one provided by the energy ball which had almost turned him to ashes, but still managed to leave a serious burn on his head. The yellow puff had to wait for the hospital before they could try to treat it properly, and at the moment the left side of his head was covered by protective gauze. The rest of his body had fortunately minor injuries.

Buttercup's case was more complex, since she did not have any serious physical injuries but had all of her muscles partially paralyzed. An exam on her blood showed the presence of unknown substances in her body, unrecognizable by anyone. An expert was needed and one expert in fact came: Professor Utonium. He'd taken the first flight he could to Ultrapolis when he was told what happened to his daughters and he wanted to participate personally on making sure they were at full health.

The Professor needed just a fast view on the results of the mentioned exam to understand that whatever Doctor Porter had stored in the canister, it had effects similar to Antidote X. Whatever it was, though, it was slowly being consumed and expelled by the brunette's metabolism, and the green puff was already able to stand on her own feet.

More specifically, Buttercup was walking around, trying to keep herself occupied and distracted from the problem at hand, one that dealt with her missing sister.

Blossom was the one of the four who had been the most endangered one. X-Rays scans had revealed a series of fractures that hit much of her backbone, and the doctor in charge of the exam unknowingly used the same words of the one responsible for it when he filled in the redhead: " _Those fractures... would kill a normal human."_

Professor Utonium had been more worried but less confused by the news. He informed the doctor that the fractures had been mostly superficial except for a limited amount of them, which still weren't able to harm the spinal cord. That was probably thanks to her powers, which granted a level of resistance even to the normally extremely vulnerable nervous tissue. The fractures were however still a threat and Blossom had been subjected to more specific exams with the supervision of her creator himself, which had the target to evaluate if she needed to go under surgery or not.

The three kids were in fact waiting for the results. That was why Buttercup, Bubbles and Donnie almost jumped when they saw the door that brought to the exam quarters open to reveal Professor Utonium himself.

A great burden was lifted from them when they spotted the form of a certain pink-eyed girl follow him from behind.

"Blossom!" Buttercup and Bubbles called together as they rushed to their own sister. They made sure to embrace her with no intention of letting her away before turning to the Professor with interrogative gazes. Donnie was watching him as well, waiting for his words.

The Professor smiled before saying, "She's good. It's been a day since the last exam but her bones have been reconstructing themselves at high speed. Your healing powers are almost terrifying to behold, especially if someone isn't used to treat patients with superpowers… but in any case, she's out of threat. She won't have to fight crime for some time, but she'll be back to it in no time if my calculations are correct."

"No fighting crime, you say? Maybe I'll get to be the leader for some time!" Buttercup said with a grin.

Blossom playfully gave a weak punch to her sister, "Hey! I can still make plans and give orders, you know!"

Bubbles giggled, and soon enough the three of them started to laugh together, happy to enjoy the company of each other.

Donnie smiled at the sight and he decided to take the chance to approach the Professor. "Professor Utonium…" he started, "I want to say… I'm sorry, I did not want to-…"

"Please Donnie, I don't want to hear more of this from you. We've already talked about it: you have no role in what happened and you shouldn't feel guilty for it."

"I know, I know! But still… this is just wrong. This wasn't what I wanted to happen to them…"

The Professor knelled down and stared at the little boy eye to eye. "Now, Donnie, you really shouldn't feel like this. But, if you _really_ want to make amends… there is actually something you can do…"

He couldn't help but smile when the boy's eye almost lighted up.

"…the girls are really tired, not only physically… it's been some time since they had to face such a demanding endeavour. They surely want to spend the next few days relaxing. What I suggest you to do, Donnie, is to get prepared and make them have the _best_ holiday they can have in your city. I'm fairly sure that's exactly what they need now. _Understood?"_

Donnie stood to attention almost military-style before answering vehemently, "Yesssir!" Then, he moved away in a hurry to join the girls and start what he should have started two days before. The Professor kept his smile as he got up and began to walk back to finish some matters he had left with the girls' treatment in the hospital. He had already booked a local hotel to stay for him and the girls and he had already agreed with Blossom about what time they should return in the evening. _No need to distract them more. They deserve to stay together for some time… I'm just glad they're all well._

Thus, the four kids left the building and began to walk towards the main exit of the hospital zone. As the girls chatted between themselves, Donnie thought about their current situation and how, finally, they were serene.

He remembered how happy looking his aunt looked when she got the chance to see him the day before at the hospital. He expected her to be worried, but not this much, and the way her face brightened when she saw him almost made him cry. Even his uncle was present and had seemed to be at least lifted in spirit when he was told his nephew was out of threat.

In addition, now that the girls themselves were finally reunited without any impending danger, Donnie could see them finally acting like the three lovable little sisters he knew. As far as he knew, there was no villain left that could arrive to put a stop to this.

Mojo Jojo had already left Ultrapolis. After being arrested, he had been sent with a state jet to the United States, where he was to be kept in Townsville's prison. Away and secured, at least for some time.

More worrying were the _local_ villains, but Donnie was sure they wouldn't show up for some time. Doctor Porter was still being looked for by squads of police men and Spec Ops agents all over the city and inside his tunnel maze, and it would take him some time to prepare anything new, especially since the Mayor had promised to not stop until he was captured.

Decay was another matter. Donnie guessed she would still be in bad shape and, therefore, harmless since their encounter, but the future was unclear. Would she listen to his words and disappear? Or would she return? Or maybe find another metropolis to torment? Realizing these thoughts wouldn't have taken him anywhere, he settled to momentarily archive the issue.

…and that was it. Nothing would come to bother him and the Powerpuff Girls now…

_Wait… did I forget something?_

"Girls!" the voice of Bubbles exclaimed, and the other three children followed her signal to the three silhouettes that were coming towards them. Unmistakable for anyone else.

The Rowdyruff Boys slowly landed in front of the four of them. All of them were scowling and with their arms crossed, but they remained silent. Were they waiting for them to say something first?

"So? What are you waiting for?" Buttercup finally asked, annoyed, "Scare us with your angry faces? Bah…"

"You actually should be!" Boomer fired back. Butch groaned, not believing what his brother had just considered smart to say.

Brick limited himself to sigh and act like his blonde sibling hadn't said anything. "Buttercup… we will _not_ fight you. Not now, at least."

Buttercup was taken aback and didn't answer right away, and even Bubbles was surprised. "What… really? You don't want to fight us?" she asked, agape. Donnie had told the girls about the surprising behaviour of the boys when the three girls were injured back in Porter's hideout, and even though Bubbles had assisted herself to how Butch had 'revived' his counterpart, it was still hard for her and her sisters to believe fully Donnie's words. But this…

"Do not even think about it, blondie," Butch said, glaring at her, "we just don't feel like doing it right now." The fighter was serious, but he was also firm and controlled, much different from his usual excited demeanour.

Blossom wasn't convinced. "If you aren't going to fight… what are you three planning?" she inquired.

"We must have a little chat with your dear friend there," Brick answered, before turning to the mentioned 'friend' himself.

The girls didn't really want to leave Donnie to deal with the ruffs alone, but the yellow puff walked forward anyway before they could protest. He _wasn't_ letting them put a halt to their holiday a second time.

"So, you wanted to talk with me?" Donnie began, trying to sound serious.

"Oh, really? Yes, Sherlock. Now, cut the 'hero' play off and listen." Brick said. He scratched his hat and narrowed his eyes before continuing, "We've seen how you fought with babygirl back in that cavern or whatever it was. I have to admit.. you…"

"You didn't do half-bad." Butch finished. "I mean, you're still miles away from us but hey, you did some good moves, and the way you went with that ending attack! That was cool!"

"She deserved that!" Boomer added, "Not to mention how she almost beat us as well. That girl really was-…"

_BONK!_

"Ouch! What gives?" Boomer complained, but Brick ignored him. "Do not listen to my brothers. What we want to say is… you don't have to worry about us for now. We'll leave you and the puffs alone for a few days."

The Powerpuff Girls at first couldn't believe what they were listening to. The ruffs taking the time to tell their enemies to know that they won't show up for some time? Had they been told this instead of witnessing it, they would have taken it for a pun for sure.

The successive event though literally blew their minds. Donnie tilted his head, then he answered, "You'll leave me alone? What, are you _scared_ or somethin'?"

"Scared? Hahaha!" Butch chortled, "How about you come here and say that again where my fists can express their opinion about it?" Despite the threat, he didn't look like he was offended… rather, he seemed to be amused.

"I say, bring it on!" Donnie replied, grinning, "I actually look forward to it, you know, I tried to spar sometimes with the girls but they obviously hold back..."

"HEY!" the girls uttered, but their cry went unheard. "I know, right?" Boomer agreed, "Those Powerpuffs sometimes act like we're little kids or something… like we're younger of them!"

Brick brought a palm over his forehead, exasperated by his brother's continuous failing at being bright, but he nonetheless told the yellow puff, "Don't worry, _Donnie._ You'll hear from us soon enough!"

He turned away and said, "Let's go boys, we got better to do than to argue with Powerpuff Girl Number Four here!"

Donnie really couldn't help to launch a final tease by shouting ' _Au Revoir!'_ to the three boys as they flied away. When he moved to join back with the girls, he was surprised to see a mixture of surprise and annoyance on their faces.

"What? Did I do something wrong?"

The girls weren't sure how to react or what to tell him, then something clicked in their minds and their understood everything.

Donnie was confused to see them roll their eyes in unison, before saying together, "Boys… they're all the same."

"Boys? What do you mean? Hello, girls?" Donnie called, but the three of them momentarily ignored his questions and walked away, forcing him to follow them.

"Okay, okay, maybe I wasn't supposed to be that friendly with them, but bear with me! They did help us in the end!"

"Whatever you say, Donnie…" Blossom said while her blonde sister giggled at Donnie's attempts to explain himself. Buttercup on the other hand reacted differently since she suddenly assaulted him and closed him into an MMA-styled grip.

"So, you say we hold back when we spar together?" Buttercup asked menacingly… then, she suddenly started to rub her fist on Donnie's head, "Tell me, am I holding back now? Am I?!"

"Stop, stop, please! No, you aren't" Donnie implored, but he was laughing all around and he didn't even seriously try to free himself.

While Blossom played along by not doing anything and smiling at the scene, Bubbles was distracted and thoughtful. When she began speaking, Buttercup and Donnie suddenly stopped their fight: "Guys, you know… all of this is strange in a way… You know, Donnie is a hero now in this city… like we are in Townsville… and Doctor Porter is somewhat his main nemesis now... just like Mojo is ours!"

"Well, that's true... we both have the mad genius as a foe now. But you still have the demonic being, the irascible hillbilly and the spoiled brat with big money!" Donnie argued. "And I've defeated my first giant monster two weeks ago, while you have to deal with them on a weekly basis!"

"Yeah, but still… it seems like it's all summing together, it's curious. Oh, and there are four _ruffs_ now in the world!"

"Don't tell me, Bubs… I tell ya, by the end of the year, there will be _fifteen_ of us in the world!"

Donnie, Blossom and Bubbles gave a glance to the green-eyed puff… then they burst out laughing.

"What? What are you three laughing about!?"

"C'mon Donnie, tell us something about Ultrapolis before Buttercup continues with her creative tales!"

"Oh, look who's talking, leader girl! The one who loves to ramble about everything she says!"

Blossom chuckled but didn't answer, and eventually when Donnie and Bubbles giggled with her even Buttercup had to let her protests die out and join their laughter. So, in the end, they left the hospital's area and began to march into the first street they found, all smiling and eager to visit every possible landmark the city had to offer.

* * *

_And so, the day is saved! With some help from the Rowdyruff Boys, surprisingly. Obviously thanks to Donnie, who proved to everyone that he indeed is a true hero. And, once again, thanks to the Powerpuff Girls! Sheesh, I'm really beginning to lose count of everyone…_

**THE END**


End file.
